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UlBRARY OF CONGRESS, I 

I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 



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C- SHIELDS. Printer, 45 Majden-Lane, N-Y 



MRSATIVE AND EECOLLECTIONS 



VAN DIEMAN'S LAND, 



DURING A THREE YEARS 



CAPTIVITY OF STEPHEN S„ WEIGHT; 



TOGETHER WITH AK ACCOUNT OF 



THE BATTLE OF PRESCOTT, 

IK WHICH HE WAS TAKEN PRISONER ; HIS IMPRISONMENT IN CANADA ; TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND 

TRANSPORTATION TO AUSTRALIA; HIS TERRIBLE SUFFERINGS IN THE BRITISH PENAL COLONY 

OF VAN DIEMAN's LAND ; AND RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES : 

WITH A COPIOUS APPENDIX, 

EMBRACING FACTS AND DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE PATRIOT WAR, NOW FIRST GIVEN 

TO THE PUBLIC, FROM THE ORIGINAL NOTES AND PAPERS OF MR. WRIGHT, 

AND OTHER SOURCES. 



" Etenjal Spirit of the chainless mind ! 

Brightest in dungeons. Liberty ! thou art, 

For there thy habitation is tlie heart— 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 
And when tiiy sons to tetters are consiffn'd — 

To ietters and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 

Th-;ir country conquers with their martyrdom. 
And Freedom's fame finds v.-ings in every wind."— Byron.- 



h"^ 



BY CALEB LYON, OF LYONSDj 

U.S.A. ._ ., 
J. WINCHESTER, NEW WORLD PRESS^ 

30 ANN STEEET. 




VVM ;: 



wintered accordiiig lo Aci oi Congress, in the j'ear iS-!4, 
BY J. W iN GH E STEJa Si CO. 

in the Clerk's Office of tke Southern District of New York. 



DEDICATION 



I INSCRIBE these pages to the friends of Canadian liberty, in the faint 
hope that I may render justice to the deserving, and give, so far as my expe- 
rience extends, a candid statement to the public. Years have passed since 
many of the events herein described transpired, yet the statements are 
made, as nearly as I can recollect, as they occurred. My mind was 
early stirred up and my sympathies excited, in favor of a people who I 
had supposed groaned under oppression, (see note 3rd) but grossly was I 
deceived, and that too by the very men who hope by their silence to con- 
ceal the contemptible part which they played in the Prescott Tragedy. 
The constant call for statements in regard to my sufferings, induces me 
to venture upon this publication, and the hundreds who welcomed me 
home fully demonstrated the necessity of my taking this course ; — being 
no speaker, I thought this way would be preferable to any other, of com- 
municating my narrative to the public. If, in the bitterness of my heart, 
I should censure some of the leading men who caused our defeat, dis- 
grace, and degradation, I hope the reader will place himself in my situa- 
tion, and then cover with the cloak of charity all that he may read amiss. 
Five years have passed since I last set foot upon my native land, and my 
love is not only green and fresh as ever, but increased ten-fold by my 
contact with oppression. And I yet think, when the crushing despotism 
of Victoria Cobourg shall have created soldiers as well as " Sons of Lib- 
erty," upon their oppressed soil, then, and not till then, can she be free — 
and befor* the people of the United States again lend their aid, they will 
have to be convinced that there is something more in their patriotism than 
a name ! While American sympathy extended to suffering and lacera- 
ted Poland, all joined with a liberal hand to shed what blessings they 
could upon the children of those victims of despotism who fell upon the 
Deleaguered battlements of Warsaw, or were inhumanly massacred 
within its walls ; help, sympathy, and kindness from America rendered 
their lot less unhappy, and concealed in a measure the bitterness of their 

1* 



Q WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

guessing that there was not another trophy in the room which was con- 
tended for with greater spirit than that same Prescott flag.) It was 
dark before we reached Millen's Bay, having stopped at Cape Vincent to 
take on board several Patriots, and when near Millen's Bay, we took in 
tow two schooners, freighted with arms and munitions of war and men, 
increasing our number to one thousand. Even here our leaders were 
disappointed, as they expected a still greater reinforcement. 

On Monday morning the 11th, we came in sight of Prescott; here the 
schooners were cut loose from the steamboat, and I embarked in one of 
them. Near Prescott they both ran aground — the schooner in which I 
was got clear and proceeded to Windmill Point, where we landed. Wind- 
mill Point is situated upon an elevated spot of ground on the brink of the 
St. Lawrence, about one mile and a half below Prescott. The walls of 
the mill being shot proof, we made it our stand, and upon its summit floated 
our blue standard. The evening of the 11th was spent in making ar- 
rangements for the morrow ; the schooner, which was aground in the 
morning, now proceeded to land her arms and munitions, but the greater 
part of the balls and other necessaries were left amid the confusion which 
prevailed. All our general officers had deceived us save Colonels Von 
Schoultz, Woodruff, and Abbey, who at first held but minor situations. 
Afl;er a deliberate consultation we elected Von Schoultz to the post of com- 
mander-in-chief of our Patriot army, which had dwindled down from one 
thousand to two hundred souls ; many of the soldiers, following the 
example of their superiors, had deserted us, and were talking (with their 
extinguished officers) bravely and gallantly in the streets of Ogdensburg. 

The gentleman who now had command was brave and daring to a fault, 
and equal to any emergency.' His height was five feet eleven ; with 
firm and graceful limbs, with a well-bred gentleness in his manners, and 
an eye which blazed in its own liquid light. It was very rarely he 
smiled, but when he did it was as sunshine through prison-bars j with a 
kind heart and as noble a soul as ever was found in fetters of clay, he 
was'one whose very faults " leaned toward virtue's side." Our Spartan 
hand consisted of two hundred men, for as the dross flees from gold by 
fire, so the craven in soul and cowards in heart fled from the support of 
the cause of liberty in its hour of danger, even before the defence was 
commenced ; and the blood of those who fell, yet dye the garments of the 
false-hearted cowards that I have already mentioned. About midnight, 
Bill Johnson came over in an open boat and informed us that five hundred 
men would join us before daylight. He was a messenger from those 
who not only had deserted us, but now wished to beguile by hopes that they 
too well knew would never be realized. This night no eye was closed, 
no hand was idle, and no heart was faint ; all was hurry, bustle, and 
confusion — all anxiety and expectation. In view of the expected rein, 
forcement, we took possession of three stone out-buildings, weakening oui 
force within the mill. The sun rose clear and cloudless — not one breath 
dimpled the waves of the St. Lawrence, and above it curled a silver veil 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 7 

of mist as incense to the sky. Von Schoultz hailed the dawn as a good omen 
of; the glorious sun-burst of Canadian liberty, but many an eye which 
gazed that morning upon the resplendent orb of light, ere night had closed 
for ever. At nine o'clock a. m., three British steamboats came down from 
Prescott, anchoring opposite the mill, and opened a fire of balls and bomb- 
shells ; at the same time, fifteen hundred of the Canadian militia and 
regulars made their appearance, the 83rd regiment occupying the centre 
and the militia forming the right and left wings. They were formed three 
deep when in line of battle. We formed likewise a line of battle, each 
man spreading from two to three yards apart, so as to cover their front, 
protected on three sides by walls and stone builings and the river, whose 
steep banks prevented the shot and shells thrown by the enemy's marine 
from doing us any mischief, which passed above our heads and created 
death and disaster among their own land forces. Before the engagement 
commenced, a sis-pounder was placed between the mill and one of the 
stone out- buildings, but so placed that in case of a retreat it would receive, 
if attempted to be taken, a raking fire from four different points; and 
would also serve as a decoy in case of an emergency. Our orders were 
not to fire a gun until we had received an assault from the British, under 
any circumstances. As the enemy advanced, their bugles sounded, and 
when within about twenty rods they halted, and fired by platoons. We 
returned their fire, and fought for three hours and ten minutes without 
cessation. The Canadian militia retreated, and left the centre of their line 
supported by the 83rd regiment (which fought fiercely and bravely) alone, 
but finding our hail-storm bullets a little too effective for their use, they 
soon followed suit, and retreated behind the rising ground that fronts the 
mill, leaving us in fair possession of the field. We followed up the re- 
treat a short distance, but finding that the enemy wished to flank us, we 
advanced no farther, as our case would have been hopeless had we been 
cut off from the mill and stone out-buildings, which proved our only 
bulwarks of safety. Losing some thirteen men, we retreated to the mill 
and made it our strong-hold, fortifying it as well as we could with our 
three field-pieces ; but judge of our surprise and desperate condition, when 
we found that there was not a solitary ball left to load our guns, render- 
ing them next to useless. 

During the engagement, I looked often toward the shores of Liberty, 
and saw thousands thronging the beach at Ogdensburgh, whose faint 
cheers reached us across the wave ; and it embittered our hearts to know 
and feel, that they whose tongues could beguile so successfully had not 
the moral courage to aid us in the hour of trial. We loaded our guns 
with pieces of broken iron, butts and screws, that we tore from the doors 
and fixtures of the mill. No sooner had we retreated, than the British, 
encouraged by the sight of a vacant field, rallied, and attempted to 
take our strong-hold by storm. In that assault the writer received a 
wound in his left arm by a musket- ball, and his friend, Charles West, 



Q WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

was shot through the body. His wound was fatal ; but to the last mo- 
ment he tore cartridges for his comrades, — the blood, at every exertion, 
gushing from his heart, and bathing his hands with its sanguine stain. 
Yet to the last he bore up nobly — no sigh escaped him. 

"He died amid the battle's broil, 
A time that heeds nor pain nor toil;" 

and his last breath was spent in cheering us to our duty. A braver 
youth never lived — a truer heart never was hushed in the sleep of death ; 
and his grave is now trod on by the feet of tyrants, and his memory is 
" unwept, unhonored, and i^nsung." During the engagement, George 
Butterfield was wounded in one of the out-buildings, and borne to the 
windmill, where he lived till evening. He was mild and gentle in his 
manners ; but when the battle commenced he was brave as a tiger, dis- 
charging his duty faithfully. In fact, he was the " Ney" of the battle 
of Prescott — " bravest among the brave." His dying words were, " My 
poor dear mother ! I fear her heart will break when she knows that I am 
dead." Then for a moment his words were incoherent, and the names 
of kindred hung upon his lips ; and in the next, his soul was disentangled 
from the net of clay, and was before its God. In the morning's engage- 
ment, there was an incident transpired worthy of remark. A matron, 
with a daughter of seventeen and a babe of six months old, Avhose hus- 
band had left her during the battle, seeing that the British outnumbered 
the Patriots by many hundreds, started with her children to join and 
claim protection of the loyalist army. (It must be remembered that she 
was one of those who resided in the out-buildings that we had taken pos- 
session of) When we saw the little family on their way, our command- 
ant gave orders not to fire in that direction. His orders were strictly 
obeyed. Yet when she had arrived within ten rods of the loyalists' line, 
a shot was fired, which broke the jaw of the daughter, and another pier- 
ced herself and her child to the heart, and both found an untimely grave 
upon the field of battle; — the dead child clasped in the arms of its dying 
mother, a metaphor of that affection which is stronger than death. And 
this murder was committed by the very men who boast of being governed 
by a woman ! Oh ! shame, where is thy blush ! Humanity recoils from 
the recital of such cold-blooded massacres of the innocent. I would here 
contradict a report which has been circulated, regarding Charles E. 
Brown's being burned alive in one of the out-buildings after having been 
previously wounded. He was shot through the head, and died instantly, 
without a groan, — falling v.athin a few feet of the spot where I stood. 
During the assault, Lieut. Johnson, of the 83rd Regiment, with about 
thirty men, undertook to seize our decoy cannon, and when within a few 
paces, was shot down by our riflemen, his party abandoning the expedi- 
tion after his death. One of our soldiers stole his coat and cap, and es- 
caped through the British camp. Passing himself off as an officer, he 
reached in safety the American shore. This was all the indignity which 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. g 

his body received at our hands ; and it would have been taken from 
the field, but for the constant fire kept up from a barn in the vicinity ; — 
yet it must be remembered, that our own dead were unburied. At night 
we received a visit from Ogdensburgh, from the cowards who came over 
to bring their golden promises of men and ammunition. But Von 
Schoultz did not relish their encouragements. He entreated that they 
would be men enough to send a boatto remove the wounded, which num- 
bered about twenty-eight, and we had no necessaries for dressing their 
wounds or ministering to their wants. We now became very suspicious 
of the designs of the false patriots. When they left us, they promised 
that before daylight all the wounded should be removed, and that we had 
best convey them to the shore, where it would take them less time to carry 
them to the steamboat. As soon as the gentlemen left, the wounded were 
taken to the shore of the river, where they lay, 'mid storm and snow, for 
seven tedious hours, waiting for the promised succor ; and deep and 
bitter were the imprecations bestowed upon those who were now regard- 
less of their promises, or the pain and sufferings of the wounded, and 
came not to their aid 'mid the dark vigils of that night of agony. Where 
were Birge, Estis, Johnson, Pendigrasse, and King ? Let them an- 
swer. One of our men had swum the river, when the frost glassed the 
pebbles of the shore and the wind blew bleak and freezing ; yet in re- 
turn, we received, instead of help, their rotten and faithless promises. 
This night was lonely — perhaps the loneliest that it ever will be my lot to 
experience : the wind whistled shrilly through the arms of the old mill, 
blending with the groans of the stricken and the dying, who lay shelter- 
less in the night's wild storm. Our flag flapped like the wings of a raven 
above our heads — 

" Few and short were the prayers we said, 
We spoke not a word of sorrow, 
But steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, 
And we bitterly thought on the morrow." 

It is generally estimated, that in the battle of Prescott the British lost 
from four to six hundred men. I distinctly recollect seeing from the top 
of the mill, a vehicle drawn by four horses, engaged in collectino- the 
enemies' dead during the engagement. There must have been about two 
hundred wounded. Our loss was thirteen killed, and twenty-eight wounded. 
The morning of the fourteenth dawned in snow and rain — ^but few slept 
— all were wearied, and many were disheartened. There lay the broad, 
beautiful St. Lawrence, and beyond it the land of the free — how we 
longed to see our wounded beyond its waters. The field before us was 
studded with the bodies of the dead. Some lay with their eyes turned to 
heaven, with an imploring gaze — others had a mild benignant smile upon 
their marble faces ; the crimson coats were dyed a deeper color in blood, 
and the snow drifted beside their bodies, covering them as with a 
shroud, while their only dirge was the beating of the waves against the 
.rock-bound shore. A mist curtained the sun — and mist gathered in the 
eyes of many of our comrades, as we thought of the weeping mothers, the 



10 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

agonized sisters, and the heart-broken wives, that had been made in the 
short space of a single day. (See Note 1st.) Now and then a shot was 
exchanged, and then all relapsed into silence. We felt how hopeless 
was our situation, but there was no whining, and no regrets, and in case 
we were put to the sword, we all had resolved to die like men. Von 
Shoultz, Abbey, George, and Woodruff, bore themselves with a manly, 
undeviating fortitude, worthy of a letter cause. The afternoon of the bat- 
tle five of our party left us in an open boat, for the purpose of procuring 
militar)'- stores, that we stood greatly in need of. George having the 
command, they were fired upon by two British soldiers, which alarmed one 
of the armed steamers up the river, and the Cobourg started in pursuit. 
They were not wounded by the swivels or small arms, yet when taken 
from the boat, it was riddled by the shot and about sinking. They were 
taken near the American shore, stripped almost naked, and thrust into 
the forecastle, amid jeers and insults. During the night of the fourteenth, 
the Canadian militia, like so many harpies, tore from the dead bodies all 
their clothing, ravaging the field in darkness in search of every kind oi 
plunder ; and these were the men that we came to fight for, and to succor 
from the galling yoke of the tyrant ! " They who would be free, must 
learn themselves to strike the blow ;" and until that time arrives, they 
can never receive that boon, priceless above all others, of liberty. On 
the night of the fi.fteenth, we were surprised by a visit from Preston King 
and others. He came in the steamboat Paul Pry, within about 
twenty-five rods of the shore. He landed in a small boat, accompanied 
by two or three of the extinguished officers from Ogdensburgh. Von 
Sehoultz now expected that help had arrived to remove the wounded to a 
place of safety. The river was clear from all crafts, and it appeared that 
now was our chance, if ever, to escape. (See Note 2nd.) Von Sehoultz 
told King, that he did not believe there were twenty men who would come 
to our assistance from the American shore. King then promised fairly 
that he would return to the Paul Pry, and carry the wounded to a 
place of safety. Von Sehoultz then said, that he would try and make a 
retreat down the river. King acted confusedly, staid about five minutes, 
and then departed ; and instead of fulfilling his promise, he got aboard the 
Paul Pry, and fled back to the American shore as fast as the steamer 
could carry him, and then circulated the falsehoods among his friends 
which are now contradicted. Had it not have been for his duplicity and 
cowardice, we should all have been saved from years of exile, and many 
from death. (See Note 4th, for the reports circulated by him regarding 
us.) We were all anxious to leave the mill, and had it not been for the 
wounded, we should have commenced a night march. Our commander 
told us that without aid our cause was lost. Our fortunes grew despe- 
rate ; the last glimmer of hope went out; the days and nights passed 
dreamily away. On the seventeenth, a flag of truce was sent out for the 
collection of the dead, which truce lasted for two hours. We collected 
the dead, but had not time to bury them. While on the fi.eld, I heard a 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. H 

Canadian officer state to Von Schoultz, that had we made good our stand 
with five hundred men, he would have joined us with three hundred ; but 
as it was, he was obliged to fight us with five hundred. About sunset, 
four steamboats well armed lay beside us in the river, and two thousand 
five hundred men in our ftont. Without ammunition, betrayed, deserted 
and disheartened, we sent a flag of truce forth to the British host, as their 
bugle rang for their first charge. Our flag was borne by four patriots, 
and was fired at, wounding one man : they then returned. What a beau- 
tiful instance of Canadian magnanimity, to shoot down unarmed men ! 
We now fortified . our stand as well as we could, loaded our guns, and 
made ready for a most desperate resistance ; — but judge of our surprise, 
when the bugle again sounded, the loyalist army advanced to within thirty 
rods, and halted ; and from the centre Col. Dundas sent a flag, summon- 
ing us to surrender at his discretion, and refusing to treat with us upon 
other terms. We then came into council, and saw that it was in vain to re- 
sist, and Von Schoultz said, that " not for himself would he surrender, but 
for the sake of those brave young men, who had become the dupes of the de- 
signing, and in the faint hope of saving their lives from the unequal conflict." 
We -then disarmed, and marched out, defiling between the soldiers of the 
83rd, who were formed on each side of us. We may well thank them for 
our lives, for 1 verily believe the ferocious militia would have torn us in 
pieces, had it not been for their timely protection. They then set fire to 
the out-buildings, and Von Schoultz, who had escaped through the back 
door of the mill, and concealed himself with two men, named Thomas 
and Wright, beneath some cedar shrubs upon the shore, was taken by 
the militia, and treated in a most inhuman and brutal manner. They 
stripped from him nearly every vestige of clothing, and marched him 
to Prescott, almost naked, during the inclemency of a Canadian 
autumn, amid jeers, scoffs, insults and reproaches almost beyond descrip- 
tion. The militia resembled ravenous fiends more than decent Christian 
men. Thomas was treated in a like manner ; but Wright, for some slight 
resistance, was stabbed with a dozen bayonets, and died without a cry for 
mercy. 

During our march to Prescott, the band of the 83rd, as if to aggravate 
our feelings, played our National Air, "Yankee Doodle." Every tone 
striking upon our ears, made us feel doubly our desolate condition, and 
stripped of our clothing and jaded out, we reached Prescott. The village 
was brightly illuminated in honor of a British victory — gained by twenty- 
five hundred militia and regulars, with fifteen field-pieces perfectly armed 
and ammunitioned, with two gun-boats and four steamers well supplied 
with marines, over one hundred and eighty-four boys and men, without 
a ball to load a field-piece, and with miserable arms and equipments. The 
author has wondered that Col. Dundas was not knighted by the queen 
for his gallantry in this very equal contest, as he considers him equally 
deserving with Sir Allan McNab. After having been buffetted and spit 
upon by the Prescott mob, we were then crowded with all our wounded 



12 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

in the forecastle of the steamer Brockville, where we were confined in 
so small a space that we could neither sit nor lie down ; and, like their 
Black Hole in Calcutta, we doubted not that they wished to smother us 
to save the trouble of a court-martial. On Saturday we reached Kings- 
ton. During the night, some meat was fed to us as if we had been dogs 
in a kennel. Many of the wounded fainted, and we thought that they 
would never again recover. Our hands were tied behind us — the healthi- 
ness of the air was completely destroyed by the large number of lungs 
exhausting it. At Kingston, the able men were sent to Fort Henry, and 
the wounded placed in a hospital, where, in a damp, fireless room, we 
lay without any attention till Tuesday. My bones ached with pain upon 
the hard floor ; and what the others must have suffered, whose wounds 
were worse than mine, the imagination can only conceive. 



CHAPTER II. 

Deaths of Von Schoultz, Abbey, George and Woodruff— Chitman and Graves, Traitors^Our Trial — Sober 
thoughts— Sir Allan McNab— Captain Drew — Sir George Arthur— July 4th, in a British Prison— Removed 
from Fort Henry to Quebec. 

On Tuesday, our wounds were dressed, and we Avere removed to the 
lower story of the same building. During the week, two of our comrades 
died, viz: Wheelock and Bromly. Our diet was oat-meal and a small 
allowance of milk. Every day we received visits from the officers of 
the Canadian militia, using very ungentlemanly language and taunting 
threats — telling the surgeon to cure us as soon as possible — that it would 
be a shame to hang sick men. I lay in the hospital for ten days — in the 
jail three, and was then taken to Fort Henry. I was placed in a room 
with about forty of our comrades. Here I met with our commander : he 
greeted me warmly through the prison grates. My handcuffs were 
removed, and I was at liberty once more to use my limbs. As soon as 
an opportunity offered, Von Schoultz inquired kindly after the wounded 
and expressed a deep concern in regard to our fate. On the 3rd of Dec. he 
was tried — on the 6th his death warrant was read to him — and on the 8th 
he was executed. His whole bearing and conduct were noble, unstained 
by a single act of weakness. Ever regardless of his own sufferings, he 
zealously tried to I'ender his companions in arms every service in his 
power. Words of kindness flowed from his lips, and with a voice whose 
melody was mild and free as the birds of the wilderness, he cheered the 
darkest and the loneliest hour of our bondage. 

A few days previous to his death, he penned the following song, which 
he called the " Maiden's Answer." It displays no ordinary poetic talent, 
and refers, doubtless, to a very beautiful and accomplished American 
lady of Salina, to whom he had been betrothed, and whose miniature was 
torn from his neck by the vile mob at Prescott. It was the last earthly 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 13 

bauble to which his heart clung ; the shadow of that being whom he 
loved more than all the world besides. He sung it with a thrilling yet 
plaintive voice, and when he finished, he remarked, with a melancholy 
.smile-r-" It is the last song I shall ever write." 

You own I am constant, yet tell me I'm cold, 
And must I my youth's early sorrows unfold 1 
Must I wake to remember the joys which are fled. 
Now hope is extinguished and passion is dead ■? 
I have lost in youth's morn all that life can endear. 
And though I seem cheerful, I smile through a tear. 

My parents, though humble, are happy and good, 

We could boast of our honor, if not of our blood; 

My lover — oh ! how the sad tale shall I tell ! 

For Poland he fought, and for freedom he fell ; 

He was noble and brave — to my soul he was dear, 

His fame claims a smile, though it shines through a tear. 

In vain would I picture my agonized heart. 
My parents oft soothe, yet no balm can impart — 
They wept o'er the child — they could not relieve. 
And the cold hand of death left me early to grieve : 
They sleep ia the grave — the loved and the dear, 
Yet though I seem happy, I smile through a tear. 

Von Schoultz was an elegant scholar — a good military engineer — and 
spoke several languages with great fluency. His father was a general 
in the glorious Polish liberating army, and he fell, covered with wounds, 
beneath the towers of Warsaw. His son attained the rank of colonel 
under Napoleon, and had been a resident in America for several years. 
No man was ever more beloved by his companions in arms, or possessed 
more the power of fascinating his enemies, who implored his life from 
that cold-blooded villain, — Sir George Arthur. Yet, like every other 
boon of mercy, he refused to grant it. His last, parting with us was ex- 
tremely touching. He had a kind word for each — he exhorted us to die 
like men. He received the supreme consolations of religion, and died in 
a firm hope of heaven. When leaving prison, he shook hands with the 
ofiicers of the 83rd, whose friendship he had won by his noble traits of 
character ; and not a dry eye was among them. They had exerted them- 
selves warmly in his behalf ; but the reply of the governor was, that "he 
would hang Von Schoultz ; for he deserved death, if no other one was exe- 
cuted." Supplication was useless; and he prepared fearlessly to meet 
his fate. He marched with a firm step to the gibbet. There he present- 
ed his confessor with his golden snuff-box, which had been restored to 
him in prison ; and adjusting the rope upon his neck, his spirit was sever- 
ed from its clay tenement, for a home in heaveri. But his dying legacy 
to us was, that he had been deceived by the false patriots at the •' battle 
of Prescott," and he wished that their conduct should be exposed to the 
world. (See note 5th,) Thus perished Niles Guslaf Scholtewiskii Von 
Schoultz, a victim upon the altar of liberty. 

There was a double loneliness in prison when we came to know and 
feel that he was dead — though dead to the world, his memory is embalmed 
in a hundred erring hearts, and the strange spell that he wound around 



14 



WRIOHT'S NARRATIVE. 



our affections — death alone can break ! The only traitors willing to save 
their lives by turning queen's evidence, vs^ere Chitman and Graves, who 
appeared against Abbey and George ; but the most of the testimony was 
taken in private. Both these men received a full pardon for their perfidy 
the day after Von Schoultz's execution. Abbey and George passed our 
grates for the condemned cells. Abbey's brow was very pale and care- 
worn ; he looked but little as he did when he cheered us on at the wind- 
mill, with a flushed face and a speaking eye — ^there was a wild enthusi- 
asm about him, which made us look upon him_ with more of pride for his 
reckless bravery, than real personal love. He died a martyr's death, dis- 
playing an extraordinary fortitude for one of his nervous temperament. 
He left three orphan children to mourn his untimely death, (see Note 
6th.) None but the blood-hound Arthur, and his satellites, rejoiced 
in his demise. Poor George was almost completely unmanned ; his dear 
wife had made application to spend an hour with him, but was re- 
fused, and this inhuman answer was made to her entreaties — " You can 
see him when dead, but not before !" The thought of his wife's being so 
near him added a poignancy to his grief, and though his step was feeble, 
his heart was firm as he approached the grave. His dying prayer was 
that the Lord would reward those, according to their works, whose dupe 
he had been ; and whose life had been yielded up an offering to that Moloch 
of the Canadian Revolution — ^'^ false sympathy." His corpse was deliv- 
ered to his heart-broken wife, whose sorrows none can soothe save death, 
that healer of all afflictions. About this time I received a visit from my 
dear father — he was the second person permitted to see the prisoners 
since our capture — and sweet was that interview. The sheriff refused 
my father the privilege of praying with any of the prisoners, and that 
(without regard to his age or occupation as a clergyman) in a most insult- 
ing manner ; he however permitted him to leave me a New Testament. 
During his stay, he exhorted the Helper of the weak to look down in 
mercy upon us amid our sore afflictions ; he told us of Paul and Silas in 
the cell at Philipi, and of Peter, whom the angel of the Lord liberated 
from prison ; and, though every description of persons were gathered to- 
gether—the licentious, the profligate, the vile and the profane, all came 
around and listened to him as one from the dead, (for the world was in 
truth dead to us,) and he was a messenger from the bright earth and blue 
sky, and our hearts were cheered in this dark hour of our affliction, ex- 
pecting daily our trials and death, as we had no hope of any other fate 
reserved for us. And now he departed, and all was gloom and dark fore- 
bodings of the future. The interview seemed not over ten minutes, though 
it lasted a full hour ; and we were many in our misery and desolation, 
incarcerated in the leprous dungeons of Fort Henry. On the morning 
of the 19th of December, Woodruff was executed. He met his death 
coolly and quietly— just as he had fought— no timid fear — no soul-sick- 
ness and dread ; but with an eagle eye and a lion heart. He fought with 
invincible courage, and contributed largely to the Prescott victory; but 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 15 

now his death-day came, " sic transit gloria raundi," (see Note 7th.) My 
trial came on the 22nd. Thie following is the charge that was preferred 
against me : 

" For the said Stephen S. Wright, on the 12th day of November, 
and on divers other days between that day and the sixteenth day of No- 
vember, in the second year of the reign of our Sovereign Lady Victo- 
ria, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
Ireland, Queen, defender of the faith, with forces and arms, at the 
township of Augusta, in the District of Johnstown and Province of Upper 
Canada, being a citizen of a foreign State at peace with the United King- 
dom of Great Britain and Ireland, that is to say the United States of 
America, having joined himself to several subjects of our said Lady the 
Q,ueen, who were there, and there unlawfully and traitorously in arms 
against our said Lady the Queen, the said Stephen S. Wright, with the 
said subjects of her said majesty, so unlawfully and traitorously in arms 
as aforesaid, did then and there, armed with guns and bayonets and other 
warlike weapons, feloniously kill and slay divers of her said Majes- 
ty's loyal subjects, contrary to the statute in such cases made and pro- 
vided, and against the peace of our said Lady the Queen, her Crown and 
dignity. You are hereby notified that the foregoing is a copy of the 
charge preferred against you, and upon which you will be tried before 
the Militia General Court-Martial, assembled at Fort Henry, in the Mid- 
land District, on Monday, the 22nd of December, 1838. You will forward 
to me the names of any witnesses you. desire to have summoned for your 
defence. Dated the 21st day of December, 1838. 

"(Signed) WM. H. DRAPER, 

''Advocate General." 

On the 22nd of December we were tried, twelve in number : but a few 
hours before, we had received a copy of the above charge, and we had 
no time to procure witnesses, and we were denied an adjournment for 
that purpose. Our plea was " Not Guilty." I told the Judge Advocate, 
George Draper, that I thought it was unjust to be tried for our lives and 
not be allowed time to procure witnesses. He answered " that they 
would do no good," and I thought he was angry at my remark. I then 
said " the proceedings of the court-martial are more like condemning 
than trying the pri^onei's." At which he started up, and called me an 
insolent impertinent scoundrel, and he then proceeded to business. We 
were all tried and convicted, including the examination of one witness, in 
twenty-eight minutes, in a v.^ry summary manner. What a noble ^e- 
cimen of justice toward Americans in Canada. When the murderer, 
McLeod, was tried, every indulgence was allowed — adjournments, wit- 
nesses, and the most talented counsel in the Empire State ; but when we 
poor dupes were tried, no personal or national protection was extended to 
us, and no noise was made when each received his sentence (after a de- 
liberation of two minutes) of death : and yet we massacred not the defence- 
less, we destroyed not their property, and we never sent living men on 



16 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

board a burning boat into a " hell of waters :" yet the chains of the con- 
vict and the tears of the exile were ours. We returned from the court-mar- 
tial condemned ; dark and gloomy were our forebodings, and the days pass- 
ed in dreamy suspense. On the fourth of January, 1839, Buckley, Lawton, 
Phelps and Anderson, were dragged to the gibbet. Poor Anderson was 
so ill that they were obliged to support him upon the scaffold. If they had 
taken the best care of him, he would doubtless have died in a few weeks ; 
but then the inhuman monsters would have lost the shedding of his patriotic 
blood, which gave them sensible satisfaction, as upon the evening after 
these barbarous murders. Col. Dundas enjoyed a pleasure party together 
with his officers. " Oh, death ! where is thy sting! oh, grave! where is 
. thy victory!" when called to die in so glorious acau.se as human liberty. 
(See Note 10th.) Every one now expected that his turn would come next. 
Mercy had fled — it was a reign of terror in our hearts. The last that 
were executed, had been convicted by the information elicited by spies 
who had been sent among them. Days, weeks and months passed in the 
still monotony of prison life, and I doubt not that it was through the very 
great exertion of our friends, that our sentence was commuted from death 
to perpetual banishment. About this time my father and mother arrived 
in Kingston, for the purpose of seeing me for the last time. My poor 
mother visited me, but my aged father was not permitted to view with 
her their erring child, whom misfortune had rendered doubly dear ; and 
many years passed before I was again permitted to gaze upon the 
face of that beloved parent. Through my tears I saw her depart, and I 
could not believe that we had met on earth for the last time. We were 
now dishonored by a visit from Sir Allen McNab and Captain Drew, (see 
Note 8th.) The former was a tall, imperious, insolent-looking man, whose 
manners were course and vulgar, and whose language was brutal in the 
extreme ; and this was the man who, with Col. Prince, ordered twenty-four 
prisoners of war to be shot down at Windsor in cold blood, (see Note 9th) 
whose bodies were exposed to every indignity, and many of them eaten 
by the loathsome swine. The soul recoils from the recital of such horrid 
deeds of barbarity in a Chiistian land. He now came to taunt us 
with his beastly slang, which his low-lived, half-drunken companion seem- 
ed to relish very highly. He asked us if we did not wish to murder him, 
as we had Lieut. Johnson at the windmill. " You d — d vile Yankee pirates, 
you ought to be hung ; if it was in my power, the d — 1 should have you 
before sunset ;" at which his companion showed his teeth in an applauding 
grin. They resembled the '■ sans culottes" of the French Revolution. 
Their visit lasted about half an hour, and every day the lower officers 
would come to spend an hour in gloating over our captivity, and glorying 
in our misfortune. The next visit of importance which we received was 
from Sir George Arthur, ex-Governor of Van Dieman's Land, and suite. 
He was the bloody Robespiere of the Canadian Revolution. His face 
Avas rather expressionless and of a dull withered color, and his form was 
rather undersize; but his eye. gleamed from beneath its heavy brush with 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 17' 

the ferocity of a blood-hound breaking covert. Not an indication of the 
milk of human kindness shone forth in any of his actions. His conduct 
would have done honor to any convict or blackguard who had been eleva- 
ted to his situation. Instead of consoling us in our misfortune, he made 
us feel the bitterness of our captivity, calling us bucaoeers, pirates and 
ruffians ; and that if we were not hung we should be life-slaves, and that 
we might take his word for it; interlarding his conversation with horrid im- 
precations ; and he appeared to gloat over our misery v/ith the joy of a fiend 
incarnate. We all felt relieved when he departed, and v/e surmised 
that something was to be done with us besides death, for his actions seemed 
like those of a starving tiger, from whose mouth some precious morsel had 
been torn by a higher power, and his reproaches, the growlings of the- 
infuriated animal ; and we all thought it was hard enough to be shut out 
from the balmy air and confined in a vermin-infected den, with loathsome 
food, without being subjected to the upbraidings of the minions of Eng- 
land's crown. Our allowance was half a pound of miserable meat, and 
one pound of bread of the coarsest and mustiest flour, and filled with 
filth that delicacy forbids to mention. No means were given us to eat or 
cook but a box stove, and twenty in each room. Thanks to the good peo- 
ple of Jefferson county, we were furnished with the means to procure 
comfortable clothes. The rooms were illy ventilated, and incrusted with 
the dreadfullest vermin that ever fed upon flesh of man. All the beau- 
tiful spring passed away, and we tasted none of its exhilarating eflfects. 
But , when July fourth came, and we thought of the thousand crowded 
churches in the land of the free, where millions of happy hearts were 
bringing meet oflTerings to that liberty whose claims we advocated at the 
sword's point, and for which we received a dungeon in this British Bastile 
as our reward ; we sang " Hail Columbia, happy land," and our hearts 
fluttered as m spirit we visited our thrice dear kindred and our native 
shores. 



CHAPTER III. 

Depart fiora Fort Henry— Arrive at Gluebec via Montreal—The forged Letter— The Captain sails under 
sealed orders — Asa Priest's death and burial — Rio Janeiro — Arrival atHobartTown — ^Descriptions taken 
— Our hard fate. 

On the 22nd of September, 1839, we left Kingston on board a canal- 
boat. We were loaded with chains, escorted by the 83rd Regiment, not 
knowing whither we were going or what Avas to be our fate. We were 
eighty-one in number, including the Windsor prisoners. We arrived at 
Montreal on the second day, and were removed to the steamboat King 
William, and on the 26th we were again removed to the ship Buffalo that 
was lying off" Quebec. As we stood upon the deck I gazed forth upon that 
impregnable fortress, the Gibraltar of America, for the first time. ■ I thought 
of our brave countryman, Montgomery, who fell fighting with unparalleled 

2 



18 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

courage upon the battlements of the citadel ; and of Wolfe, the amblx: 
tious and chivalrous Briton, who sank to sleep in the arms of victory' 
upon the Plains of Abraham ; and of Montcalm, the generous and daring, 
Whose grave was scooped out by the shell which destroyed his life. And 
could Wolfe's bones repose beneath that white pyramid, which rose amid 
the rocks and trees so pure and bright, and see his blood-bought citadel 
in the hands of tyrants ? — the degenerate sons of once noble ancestors I 
About this time the following forged letter was received by my parents, 
indited, doubtless, by some of the creatures of Sir George Arthur — so 
that they in fact knew whither we were bound long before the news readi- 
ed me, as our captain sailed under sealed orders. 

" Quebec, 26th September. 
" My dear Father, Mother, Brothers and Sisters : — We are to go on 
board the ship Buffalo this evening for New South Wales — we expect 
that we are to sail immediately. I hope that none of you will mourn for 
me. I am in good health and spirits, considering my hard fate ; yet I 
feel thankful to the wise Disposer of events, who has enabled me to bear 
up under the trials I have undergone. In him I put my trust, and have 
hope that he will watch over me, and that I yet may return to my rela- 
tions in my native land. God bless you — farewell. 

" Yours, most affectionately, 

" S. S. WRIGHT." 

Our captain was a kind, humane man : when his orders were opened, 
we found that we were bound for Van Dieman's Land direct. We had 
rather an unpleasant storm while in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but we 
were kept close in the hold until upon the broad ocean. Our ship's crew 
consisted of fifty-seven Lower Canadians and eighty-one from the Upper 
Province, and one hundred and thirty sailors, soldiers and majrines. F<m 
the first time we realized that we were upon the glorious sea, that has 
been so well sung by Proctor : 

" The wide, the blue, the ever free- 
Without a mark, without a bound, 
It runneth the earth's wide regions ronnd.. 
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, 
Or like a cradled creature lies." 

It was a glorious sight to gaze upon the vast expanse of bright blue 
waters, reflecting heaven in their depths, and catch the soft balmy breezes 
from the tropics (for only on fair days we were permitted the luxury of 
being on deck, and then only twenty-four at once, when all the soldiers 
and marines kept a good look-out, forming a complete guard around us,) 
and watch the stormy petrel, that bird of the waters, upon our lee — and 
catch the glimpse of a snowy sail far a-way in the dim perspective of the. 
distance. 

After being at sea about five w^eks, there was a conspiracy formed to 
take the ship : about eight prisoners were engaged in it zealously^ and as. 
there were but two sentries, and the marines and soldiers all unarmed^ 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 19 

and there being but one thin paneled door between us and where the 
arms were stacked, had we all been united, we would have succeeded 
beyond a doubt; but treachery displayed itself in ourrtiidst. The night 
previous to the consummation of our hopes, two Judases accidentally 
overheard the names of those concerned in it, and reported the same to 
the captain — their names were Terrell and Smith — and on the evening 
when we were to commence our operations, the hatches were bolted down, 
the senti-ies doubled, the soldiers and marines were called to arms, the 
arms were removed from their former location and placed in the gun-room, 
and for two weeks we were not permitted to go on deck ; and when we 
did the sailors had cutlasses, and every man was armed, and the guard 
was stricter than ever — yet not a syllable escaped the captain on the sub- 
ject of the mutiny. One of our number, Asa Prest, of Auburn, N. Y., 
began to decline. The ship's surgeon said that he had no particular dis- 
ease, save that of a broken heart— no remedies produced any effect. He 
had left a wife and five children, dependent upon his labor for sustenance, 
and his constant wail was for home, its ease, its joys and its affections. 
Yet so patient amid all his sufferings, so kind and forgiving to his en&. 
mies, and endowed with superior mental qualifications, that we grieved, 
much at his departure. He had 

"An eye of most transparent light, / 

Which almost made the dungeon bright:; 
And not one groan or murmur, not 
One sigh o'er his untimely lot. 

" I saw he could not hold his head 
Nor lift his dying hand — nor dead. 
Though hard he strove, yet strove in vain. 
To breathe the fresh, pure air again." , 

I came near him and bent my ear to his li{>s ; the struggling spifrit 
softly echoed the names of his household idols. " Wife and dear children, 
may God bless them !" and the last words died upon his tongue. It was- 
a saddening sight to view the living and the dead mingled together in th© 
ship's hold, and to feel that no kindred would close his eyes or ever know- 
where he slept, far away where the blue waters flow, and the winds and: 
waves, free and unfettered, moaning forth his dirge and requiem. May 
his children ever remember that the blood of a heart-broken martyr ran 
in his veins. He died at midnight, and the next morning his body- 
was committed to the deep. Four of our number were allowed to see the?; 
burial. Prayers from the service of the church of England were reacts 
over the body, which was sunk in silence in the waters of the Atlantic^ 

The last of November Ave reached Rio Janeiro and cast anchor for water: 
and sea-stores. It was during the celebration of the emperor's birth-dayv 
The harbor streamed with the flags of every nation in the v/orld, and there 
the stripes and stars gladdened our eyes. Relieved by a back ground of ex^ 
ceeding beauty, the spires of a hundred cathedrals glittered like burnish. 
ed gold as they pointed the soul to heaven ; and behind thecity, rose lofty^'^ 
mountains of every variety of grandeur and sublimity. Around us- lay- 

2* 



20 V/RIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

islands, while a thousand pleasure-boats, gliding as butterflies upon the 
waters, enlivened the scene. This city is the largest and most flourishing 
in South America. Its bay and harbor is studded with a hundred islands, 
and said to surpass in beauty that of the far-famed Naples. The shore 
rises gently into wooded hills, planted with villas and convents, and above 
towers Mount Corovado, whose sides are covered with shrubs of pristine 
loveliness and beauty. As we lay there prisoners, we could hear the 
swelling strains of martial music sound sadly upon our ears, and the 
bravos '^ of the multitudes who swarmed upon the shores." Our ship 
was visited by an English admiral and a post captain. Their conduct 
was respectful, and unlike that we had previously received from those 
who held much higher situations; convincing us that it was but the sewn 
of England v/ho ruled in Canada. The Methodist missionary located here, 
paid us a visit, and inquired kindly what had been our treatment upon 
the voyage ; and he also gave us some Bibles. 

Five days after our arrival we again set sail for Van Dieman's Land, 
and after the usual monotony of a sea voyage, we arrived on the 14th of 
February, 1840, in the harbor of Hobart Town. The first object that 
greeted our sight, was Mount Wellington, which overhangs the town, and 
which loomed above the waves long before the town at its base was in 
sight. Our descriptions were taken by an officer and his clerks : he 
was superintendent of convicts. At the time the following questions were 
asked : " What is your name ? what is your trade ? what is your age ? 
what is your religion ? what is your native place ? Avhere were you tried ? 
when did you leave Canada ? are you married ? are your pai'ents living ? 
where do they reside ? what is their native country ? what is their religion ? 
can the read l can they write ? can you write ? what is your number ? 
After all these questions were answered, a minute examination was made 
of our bodies, and every mole, scar and spot was recorded, and our height 
and weight v/as taken into consideration so that we could be identified in 
the event of an escape. All this minutiae was particularly inserted and 
afterward read over to each, and signed with his own hand. We were 
then taken to Sandy Bay, near Hobart Town, and placed in a yard as if 
we had been cattle. All our clothes were taken from us, and the prison- 
ers' dress put on, which consisted of a jacket, a pair of pantaloons, a cap 
and a pair of shoes. The body of the dress was black and yellow, half 
and half, and made of a miserable woollen material. It resembled the 
dress of a clown or the plumage of a magpie, and lasted about one month ; 
and allowed but two suits a year, we had three months to go half naked, 
to say the least. The cap was leather, and fitted close to our well-sheared 
heads. When the clothes were all worn out, and the homely-made shoes 
had fallen to pieces, we were bare-footed, and had but a small blanket 
tied about us to hide our nakedness. Exposed to biting winds and storms 
of sleet and snow, the huts in which we slept were built of slabs set up 
endways, very poorly thatched, and the top covering thin and leaky, giving 
us the benefit of rather a free circulation of air. In fact, we were at the 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 21 

mercy of the weather ; — our floor was the ground, and after a rain, pools of 
water stood for hours in the hut. No fire was allowed us either to warm 
or dry our clothing ; our food was half a pound of meat and one pound of 
bread ; the meat was generally fetid and sometimes filled with vermin — 
bony and stringy — and any well-fed dog would have refused to eat it. 
Our bread was composed of oats, barley and rice, with a little wheat ground 
together ; all the fine flower sifted out, and we were given the coarse ; it 
was bread that even a Grahamite would have starved upon. Such was 
our fare. 

On the morning of the 17th we were paraded in a line, and the gov- 
ernor of the island, Sir John Franklin, (the great navigator) made his 
entre with his suite. We were then ordered to take oflf our caps, which 
was obeyed. He is an old man and is ruled by his counsellors, v/ho ride 
over the people rough-shod ; but it is considered freedom to the anarchy and 
confusion that prevailed during the governorship of the '•' bloody execu- 
tioner," Sir George Arthur. He looked like a ionvivcmt, without any strong 
marks, save obesity and imbecility. The noble and generous Captain 
Wood accompanied him. Let me here return our united thanks to Lady 
Colburn, who kindly supplied us with drafts and chess-boards to v/hile 
away the tedium of our voyage, as well as the captain of the good ship 
Buffalo, whose unabated kindness will never be forgotten, and the feeling 
manner with which he discharged his arduous duties. The governor 
commenced a set speech in a slow nasal tone, and after proceeding for a 
few minutes — the amount of which was that he had received no orders 
regarding us from the home Government — he ended by asking the 
captain, what had been our conduct during the voyage ? The answer 
" remarkably well," was very satisfactory to us ; and the governor then or- 
dered that we should be set to work upon the roads for Government, admon- 
ishing us at the same time to behave ourselves, or we would fare hard ; and 
he and his suite departed. The overseers whom the superintendent placed 
over us were men of the worst sharacters ; being felons and convicts, hav- 
ing been condemned for the most awful crimes that shuddering humanity 
records : — arson, theft, murder, rape, burglary, forgery. We were har- 
nessed two and two, four being placed before each cart. We were then 
marched to work a distance of two miles : when we had reached the 
quarry of broken stone, we were ordered to fill them. The bodies of the 
carts were about six feet long, four wide, and two deep. We were 
then obliged to draw the carts, well filled, laden with from fifteen to eight- 
een hundred weight, and drag them over broken ground one mile ; and draw 
thirteen loads each day through rain and shine, wet and dry, rocks and 
mud. After we had been there about four months, four of our number 
effected their escape. They had been so dreadfully worked, that they 
made up their minds to die in being taken rather than to endure longer 
the loathsome curse of slavery. The broad blue sea was before them, 
and vessels arriving weekly from the United States. The temptation was 
too strong to be resisted, and they fled. After the first month of toil, it was 



22 . WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

frequent that we fainted in performing our tasks that were imposed upon 
us by the foulest of the convicts of the known world ; and night after 
night have we been dragged to the huts in a state of utter prostration and 
insensibility. And if we refused to do the tasks imposed upon us, we 
were taken before a magistrate (no defence being permitted,) and sen- 
tence passed upon us of seven days' solitary confinement for the first 
offence, and fed during the time upon one-fourth pound of bread per day. 
This living grave was a vault without light, with an uneven floor flagged 
with stone, and without any room for standing erect ; it was two feet wide 
and six in length, ventilated with irregular crevices in the wall. ' In 
some parts of the body the blood almost stops circulation while undergo- 
ing this inhuman torture ; and this we received for the most trivial in- 
discretion, while the filth of these dens of infamy surpasses all descrip- 
tion. The first time that I was incarcerated it was for the following hein- 
ous misdemeanor : — On returning from work in the midst of a perfect 
tempest of rain and piercing wind, and being wet to the skin, and seeing 
a good cheerful fire burning in the cook's room, I committed the awful 
outrage of warming my shivering limbs ; and that taste of comfort cost 
me seven days' solitary confiement upon one-fourth pound of bread per 
day and filthy water. I thought with Doctor Franklin, I had paid a little 
to%dear for my whistle. About this time, the four prisoners who had es- 
caped were captured upon a desolate island, six miles from the shore. 
The boat in which they started from the shore in, was wrecked upon the 
rocks. They had subsisted for two weeks upon cockles and other shell 
fish ; and for a week had been in a deplorable and starving condition. 
When taken, two of them were nearly dead ; but the others, by dint of 
iron constitutions, had survived the pains of starvation with unparalleled 
fortitude. They were tried, and sentenced to Port ArtPiur, a penal settle- 
ment, to labor in irons for two years. Their work was the carrying of 
shingles, and working in water four feet deep, and every night they were 
locked in a separate cell. 

After being here for some months, we were removed to a station in the 
interior. Our removal was made to prevent any further escape. Our 
men at present were in a dreadful situation, and like so many swine, were 
seen to eat the potatoe skins and cabbage stumps that were cast from the 
door of a chief felon, who presided over us. At this station we became 
acquainted with a poor fellow whose history is worth recording. He was 
a child of sin begot at the " West End" of London, and with his deserted 
mother (a victim of one of England's lordlings,) was turned out to shift 
for himself in the streets of the Metropolis, and for stealing a penny-loaf, 
was sent to this Procrustes bed of despotism for life. Others were sent 
from conspiracies and malice, and others for not resisting temptation and 
quietly starving to death in " merrie auld England." The next station 
was that of " Lovely Banks." It was a clear, bright morning on which we 
started, and arrived there at evening. Here our labor was greatly in- 
creased, as we were engaged in building the road between Launceston 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 23 

and Hobart Town. It was the law of the land, that any person who gave 
the convicts food or tobacco, and the same was found upon our persons, 
the donor was fined; and we were subjected to not less than seven, and 
not over twenty-one days' solitary confinement. One evening, for refu- 
sing to carry (in an over-worked and debilitated state,) a bar of iron, 
weighing one hundred pounds, to the station, the distance being four miles, 
I lay in one of those living graves one week ; and many a time have we, 
barefooted, and in the snow four inches deep, gone to work shivering with 
cold, half naked, with our bodies wrapped in tattered blankets, and so 
hoarse with colds that our groans alone were audible. At Sandy Bay, 
Lysaader Curtis's health began to decline, and he was taken to the hospi- 
tal, but was remanded back to work, where he was put again to the wheel- 
barrow ; but his strength was unequal to the task. But the overseer said 
he should wheel the load, or he might die at the quarry ; and the poor 
fellow supplicated for mercy in vain, and that was his last day's labor. 
He fainted upon the ground, and was borne back to the hospital, where, 
■with no attendance, and in great agony, he perished in forty-eight hours 
after he left the road. In his dying words, he prayed that the good peo- 
pie of Ogdensburgh would kindly remember his wife and children. At 
this place William Nattage was blown up by blasting, and he lingered a 
few days, and died in dreadful spasms. He desired that his family 
might be provided for by the lovers of liberty in Ohio. Thus the vales 
of Van Dieman's Land are whitened by the bones of exiles from the land 
of Washington. There was scarcely a station where some of our num. 
ber did not fade from the earth ; and to look back and think of our hideous 
situation, where, without any attention, our brethi'en were sick — died and 
were buried, as if they had been the beasts of the field, or the fowls of 
the air, is horrible. The scenery of the island would require the pen 
of a poet, or the pencil of a painter, to do anything like justice to it. 
The trees were covered with a foliage of peculiar beauty, and hundreds 
of warblers from the wild-wood soothed us at our work — while the moun- 
tains rose in forms of grandeur, whose tops were lost amid the clouds 
of heaven. Nature seemed to' console us, and I felt for the first time in 
nay life that 

" Man's inhumanity to man 
Makes countless thousands mourn." 



CHAPTER IV. 

WiGlams's Death— The Traitors— Bridgewater— The Governor's Visit— The Hospital— Tickets-of-Leave— 
Work for Mr. Barrow— His kindness- Morality of Van Dieman's Land. 

A PRISONER now died whose real name wa^ Steward, but who was 
tried under the nom de guerre of Williams : he was taken with the inflam- 
mation of the eyes. He was removed to a small place upon the Derwent 
called Norfolk, where through negligence he died. He was from Cleve- 



24 WRIGHT S NARRATIVE. 

land, Ohio, and was considered quite talented. His age, I believe, was 
twenty-six. On this station were Linus W. Miller and Joseph Stewart. 
We heard there were some American whalers at Hobart Town, from some 
convicts fresh from there, and these men went in behalf of the American 
captives, to see what chance of escape might offer, and report the same 
to us. The former was a young lawyer of fine talents — a perfect Em- 
met in patriotism. They had been gone, after breaking from the hut at 
midnight, about ten days, and the hope of our liberty seemed brightening ; 
but Orin W. Smith and James M. Atcherson betrayed them to a magis- 
trate, and they were taken on their return from the sea-shore, without 
our ever having known what they had accomplished. They were tried 
and condemned, and sent to Port Arthur in chains, for life. Miller was 
taken a prisoner at Windsor, and the governor told us at his next visit, that 
he should never leave the penal settlement as long as he remained upon 
the island. How bitter v/ere our hearts toward our beti'ayers ! — and every 
man felt deeply for the fate of our two captured brethren. 

The morning after their discovery, we left the station and proceeded to 
a place called Green Ponds, and here Smith and Atcherson received their 
rewards in being made overseers over us. We charitably thought that our 
own countrymen would try and alleviate our misery ; but alas ! we found 
them harder task-masters than those very convicted felons, plucked from 
the lovv'est sinks of vice in Great Britain. Such is the fact — my cheek 
blushes to record it. Smith was now the double traitor — for it was him who 
played false on board the Buffalo. They now tried to get us to revolt — 
murder the soldiers — and take the barracks ; and I doubt not would have 
succeeded, as we were ready for anything. But we happened to over- 
hear a confei'ence between them ; that if they succeeded and gave the 
Government timely information, they would thus get a free pardon at the 
sacrifice of all our lives. Was not this most base, unmanly, and ungener- 
ous ? yet " let it be told in Gath, and published in Ascalon," that this 
same manikin Smith is from French Creek, and was a colonel in our army, 
who skulked at the battle of Prescott, and was afraid to fight or to run 
away, as some of his superiors had set him the example. Poor, pitiable 
wretch ! " may the Lord reward nim according to his works." As a kind 
of extra work, we we obliged to cut and draw from four to six loads of 
wood, over a mountainous road, the distance of four miles per day ; and 
that too, with bleeding feet and lacerated bodies, chilled and wet ; yet not 
even permitted to warm ourselves by the fire it made. 

We now left Green Ponds for Bridge water, within twelve miles of Ho- 
bart Town. I now joined my old comrades from whom I had been parted 
for many months. We were here employed in building a bridge across 
the Derwent ; we were obliged to quarry stone and draw it a mile, and 
were engaged at work with three, and often four hundred other convicts, 
mingled together in the loathsome society. Often our rations were stolen 
from us. Some of the darkest days of my captivity, were the sixteen 
that I had to pass among such a vast number of the offscourings of crea- 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 25 

tion — the dregs of the vilest of the vile. The tide of the river set above 
where we were at work, and half the time we were up to our knees in 
water. 

Now w(! were separated, and sent to different parts of the island in com- 
panies of ten and twelve. The squad I was in, went to build a new 
station at Brown's river ; there we had to carry shingles and timber upon 
our backs for one mile. There were several hundred prisoners here, and 
we were again subjected to the caprices of felon overseers. I received 
twenty-one days' solitary confinement here, for not telling who gave me 
a piece of tobacco. After we had been here three weeks, the governor 
made us his third visit ; he inquired about our conduct ; the superintendent 
told him that we were the best men to work, and the best behaved on 
the station — the crimes of the other convicts being that, when hard press- 
ed with hunger, they would break from their huts at midnight, and trespass 
upon the nearest potatoe fields, where they would devour them like half 
famished swine. In a short time, the governor told us, we should 
receive " tickets of leave," which would give us the liberty of the island. 
He read us the Secretary of States' letter, which informed us that the 
Government road work was remitted from six to two years, and then we 
should have all our earnings. I have since learned that this was accom- 
plished through the means of Mrs. Benjamin Wait, who is now a saint in 
heaven. To her memory we owe eternal gratitude ; for I doubt not that 
long before the six years had expired, we should every one of us have 
fed the earth worms of Van Dieman's Land. We felt rejoiced as the 
day of our liberation drew near ; every Saturday we stripped our bodies 
and washed our clothes ; and for the offence of stealing a piece of beef, 
one of the English prisoners received the following sentence from the magis- 
trate — " seventy-five lashes from the cat-o'-nine-tails." There he was, 
strung upon a triangle, and the executioner run his fingers through the lashes 
of the cat, to see if it was in perfect order, and after the first blow, shreds 
of skin and flesh were flayed off by every one that followed : no groan or cry 
was uttered, but his face looked the perfect picture of agony. A surgeon was 
by, and occasionally felt his pulse, making him bear to the very highest de- 
gree all the torture that the system could stand, without destroying his 
life. And when the bloody deed was finished, a pail of brine was dashed over 
his torn and quivering back, and yells of horror and pain broke from his 
ashy lips. Oh Heaven ! how are thy images mutilated, and the soul tor- 
tured amid the pains of its tenement of clay. Though vile and erring, 
though licentious and profligate, can they not return to thaf> fount of spirits 
from whence they emanated ? though soiled and earth- worn, by calling 
upon Him whose holiest name is Father ? And yet, reader, hear the lan- 
guage of one of the ministers of the church of England, when I called 
upon him to do us the favor of preaching a funeral sermon upon the death 
of Nattage, on the following Sabbath. " Convicts have no souls f — people 
so vile ought not think of such honors — and he hoped I would not insult 
him again by making so impertinent a request." 



28 WRIOHT^S NARRATIVE. 

Whiie engaged at work upon this station, I was severely wounded by ' 
the fall of -a limb upon my shoulder. I was taken to the hospital, whsre, 
through the kindness of a convict-pardoned physician, I was appointed 
attendant about four months. The number of patients varied from twenty 
to forty ; and when any of them died, they were buried like so many car- 
rion carcasses. The naked bodies thrown into a rough box, were tumbled 
into pits. The most unfriendly and unfeeling disposition was ever mani. 
fested by the surgeon in attendance, who, like all the inhabitants, consid- 
eared the prisoners as no better than brutes. Southern slavery, in its 
worst form, would have been a paradise to the infernal caprices to which 
we were ever subjected. When engaged in doing my duty, my heart 
often sickened, as the maniac's cry came forth in a husky voice upon my 
ear. " Write ! yes, write to my mother in Scotland, that I am innocent. 
God knows it — let me rest now — the chains grow lighter — now they are 
off — Fm free !" and the frenzied victim sank back a corpse. And often 
have I watched the big death-tears fall from the eyes of the repentant 
exiles, when the memory of better days misted their souls on their road to 
heaven ; with no kindred to catch their latest sigh, or cherish their expi- 
ring words. The fear of death was entirely destroyed by the sight of 
such horrid sufferings ; and my heart bled to hear them, in their last mo- 
ments, call upon the names of their households beyond the sea. The lu- 
natic's cry was for home — dear home — take me home ! Its well remem- 
bered joys haunting him through sin and sorrow, suffering and shame. 
And when the soul broke from the fetters of the body, it was jioy to see 
the image of God sink into calm repose, untortured by the excruciating 
agonies of disease. In this lazar-house of wo, many a feeble man, having 
been over-tasked till disease was generated, was sent here to die ; and 
the frailer his constitution, the sooner were his miseries ended. No res- 
pect was ever paid to what he had been. The blood-suckers only look 
;and see what he is ; and the name of a " sick convict," is a sure passport to 
the grave. I was glad when I left this abode of death; this hell of human 
suffering, and again returned to work. After laboring till the sixteenth of 
February, 1842, we all received our •' tickets of leave." But instead of 
atheir giving us the liberty of the whole island, we found, upon examina- 
':tion, that they were confined to six of the interior districts only. Our 
'Uickets of leave" were granted us at Hobart Town; yet we were liable, 
at a moment's warning, to be called into the service of Government; and 
■we were most unceremoniously hurried out of town, for fear some of our 
■■■.nnMiber irdght escape. That night we prepared to sleep in the woods sev- 
eral miles from town ; but a kind tavern-keeper came and invited us to 
lodge at his house, near by. All our clothes had been purloined by her 
majesty's officers, (some of us had two or three good suits,) and the 
rest were destroyed by rats. When we started, the next morning, we 
looked like a flock of half-picked Bob-a-lincums. chattering with pleas- 
itire, like so many magpies. It was three days before I found employ, 
ment. All the people looked upon us as so many scape-gallows, and vag- 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 27 

aborids. Some laughed at us ; and a comical figure we cut, sans culotte. 
Others gave us old clothes. We were all rags and tatters — pale and 
wan. In uniform, no militia could hold a candle to us. Misery likes 
company, and we had enough of both. A kind man, on the road, lent me 
a dollar to buy food. I was first employed at Rothwell, for three weeks, 
by a wheelwright, who procured me some decent clothing ; and I then went 
to work for- a Mr. Barrow, a chief magistrate, who very kindly advan- 
ced me five pounds. This g^tleman deserves my sincere thanks ; for 
my stay was rendered, the three months I was with him, as pleasant as 
kindness and attention could make it from his beautiful and accomplished 
wife, and her amiable sister ; and at times the poor exile almost forgot his 
bondage. In fact, after the hardships we had endured, it was pleasant 
to ealLwhat we earned by the sweat of our brows, our own. He lives 
in the style of an English nobleman — kept horses and hounds — was a 
capital shot, and an excellent whip — could back a horse through thick 
and thin, over hill and dale, rock and wood. Kangaroo hunting was his 
delight. He permitted me free access to his library, where I found files 
of American papers, and my eyes devoured their contents with unre- 
strained delight. With great regret I parted from this interesting fam- 
ily. Mr. Barrow told me, if ever I had any need of his aid, to call on 
him, and it should be freely given. I would here remark, that before 
strangers he was cold and distant toward me ; but when with his fam- 
ily, he was very kind and familiar. 

I went to Campbelltown, where I joined an association of mechanics, 
got up by our comrades. I am sorry to say it proves, as yet, more agree- 
able than lucrative. The Government regulations concerning ticket- 
of-leave-men, were rigid : forbidding any prisoner being in the street after 
8 o'clock. I was only once caught out, and had my head shaved, and was 
confined seven days in the living grave that I have previously described. 
We were all obliged to attend church every Sabbath, and in case of a 
refusal, were severely punished. I have frequently seen the priest so 
drunk that he could hardly stand upright, while hickuping forth the prayers, 
and once he actually fell while descending the steps of the pulpit. He 
was publicly known to be a notorious inebriate, and his wife had been 
caught in adultery. The island is governed by a governor, a council, 
a court of queen's bench, and a chief magistrate — all appointed by the 
home Government ; and many other officers, upon the recommendation 
of the first executive officer. All laws lose their force in Vaa Dieman's 
Land ; bribery and corruption attending poor justice at every turn as her 
favorite handmaidens. The manners of the people are gross and sensual : 
— they are composed of pardoned convicts, blacklegs, gamblers and lib- 
ertines, and many are entirely destitute of morals and common decency. 
As soon as we discovered some of our brethren inclined to inebriation, 
we formed a little temperance society, and we doubt not that it has saved 
them many weeks from the wretchedness of those living graves. The con- 
>aminating influence of such a society of villains, none can describe. There 



28 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

is an article which, if imported there, would command the highest price • 
it is female virtue — licentiousness, libertinism, drunkenness and debauch- 
ery, being the order and fashion of the day ; and a really virtuous person is 
looked upon with as much disgust there as a vicious one is here. Exceptions 
to this general rule are very extraordinary. Besides these, there are 
many other vices, too loathsome to mention : — every woman, after she 
has been married six weeks, prefers any man to her husband. Virtue 
goes unrewarded, and vice is protected in this land of Van Demons. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Aborigines of Van Dieman's Land — ^Features — Knowledge of a Supreme Being — Acuteness of Dis- 
crimination — Habits — Arms — Diseases — Number — Inducements held out by the Government to Settlers 
— Bush-rangers — Oifer of Pardon to those assisting in their Capture — Capture and Execution of two — 
Giant of Free Pardon, etc., etc. 

For many of the following facts regarding tne aborigines of Van Die- 
man's Land, I am indebted to Frezcinct, Widdowsons, and other valuable 
works upon this interesting subject. So little is known of these sons of 
nature — and still less has been done to give any knowledge of them — 
that not much can be offered as to their state formerly. From what I 
have read, the natives of Van Dieman's Land are unlike any other In- 
dians, either in features, their mode of living, hunting, &c. There are 
many hundreds of people who have lived for years in the Colony, and yet 
have never seen a native. ***** 

The features of these people are anything but pleasing : a large flat 
nose, with immense nostrils ; lips particularly thick : a wide mouth, with 
a tolerably good set of teeth ; the hair long and woolly, which, as if to 
confer additional beauty, is besmeared with red clay (similar to our red 
ochre) and grease. Their limbs are badly proportioned. The women 
appear to be, generally, better formed than the men. Their only cover- 
in «• is a few kangaroo skins, rudely stitched, and thrown over the shoul- 
ders ; but more frequently they appear in a state of nudity. Indeed, so 
little knowledge have they of decency or comfort, that they never avail 
themselves of the purposes for which apparel is given to them. Lieut. 
Collins, in his account of the natives of Van Dieman's Land, describes 
their marriage ceremonies as being the most barbarous and brutal ; and 
I have also heard from individuals who have visited the country, that 
it is not uncommon to see a poor woman almost beaten to death by 
her lover, previous to his marrying her. From the shyness of the na- 
tives of Van Dieman's Land, and the constant warfare that has been car- 
ried on between them and the remote stock-keepers, (which is not likely 
to render them more familiar,) I have not been able to ascertain whether 
there is any trace of religion among them, or if they have the slightest 
idea of a Supreme Being. I believe, and it is generally supposed, they 
have not. 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 29 

" It is but fair to remark, however, that nothing has been done for them ; 
the few that can speak a little English, only curse and swear, and this 
they catch up very readily from the different convicts they meet with. 



" There are but few instances of any native having entirely forsaken his 
tribe, however young he may have been taken away ; they appear to dis- 
like anything in the shape of labor, although, if they take to cattle, 
they are, beyond anything, quick in tracing and finding those lost. So 
acute is their power of discrimination, that they have been known to 
trace the footsteps of bush-rangers over mountains and rocks ; and, al- 
though the individual they have been in pursuit of has walked into the 
sides of the river as if to cross it, to elude the vigilance of his pursuers, 
and has swam some distance down and crossed when convenient, yet 
nothing can deceive them. Indeed, so remarkable is their discernment, 
that if but the slightest piece of- moss on a rock has been disturbed by 
footsteps, they will instantly detect it. The aborigines of this island 
have no appointed place or situation to live in ; they roam about at will, 
followed by a pack of dogs, of different sorts and sizes, but which are 
used principally for hunting the kangaroo, opossum, bandicoot, (fee. 

" They are passionately fond of their dogs ; so much so, that the females 
are frequently known to suckle a favorite puppy instead of the child. 
They rarely ever move at night, but encircle themselves round a large 
fire, and sleep in a sitting posture, with their heads between their knees. 
So careless are they of their children, that it is not uncommon to see boys 
grown up with feet exhibiting the loss of a toe or two, having, when in- 
fants, been dropped into the fire by the mother. The children are gen- 
erally carried (by the women) astride across the shoulders, in a careless 
manner. They live entirely by hunting, and do not fish so much, or use 
the canoe, as in New South Wales, although the women are tolerably ex- 
pert divers ; the craw-fish and oyster, if immediately on the coast, ai'e 
their principal food. Opossums and kagaroos may be said to be their 
chief support ; the latter is as delicious a treat to an epicure, as the for- 
mer is the reverse. The manner of cooking their victuals is by throw- 
ing them on the fire, merely to singe off their hair ; they eat voraciously, 
and are very little removed from the brute creation as to choice of food ; 
entrails, &c. sharing the same chance as the choicest parts. They are 
extremely expert in climbing, and can reach the top of the largest forest- 
trees without the aid of branches ; they effect this by means of a small 
sharp flint, which they clasp tightly in the ball of their four fingers, and 
having cut a notch out of the bark, they easily ascend, with the large toe 
of each foot in one notch, and their curiously manufactured hatchet in 
the other. Their weapons of defence are the spear and waddie j the 
former is about twelve feet long, and as thick as the little finger of a 
man. The tea-tree supplies them with this matchless weapon ; they harden 
one end, which is very sharply pointed, by burning and filing it with a flint 



m WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

jwepared; foiT'tfee puqjose. Iri' throwing the spear they are very expsBt; J 
indeed, of late, their audacious atrocities have been lamentably g;'eat,< 
although, at the same timej I have little hesitation in saying, they have^ 
arisen from the cruel treatment experienced by some of their women 
from the hands of the distant stock-keepers. Indeed, these poor mor- 
tals, I kno^v, have been shot at merely to gratify a most barbarous cruelty. 

"After killing a white man, the natives have a sort of dance and rejoi- 
cing ; jumping, and singing, and sending forth the strangest noises ever 
heard. They do not molest the body when dead, nor have I ever heard 
of their stripping and robbing the deceased. 

" Among themselves they have no funeral rites ; and those who are aged 
or diseased are left in hollow trees, or under the ledges of rocks, to pine 
and die. These people are subject to a disease, which causes the most 
loathsome ulcerated sores ; two or three whom I saw were wretched look- 
ing objects. I remember a very old man, who was thus affected, bek^ 
tried and hung, for spearing one of Mr. Hart's men ; the culprit was so 
ill and infirm as to be obliged to be carried to the place of execution. I 
think the colonial surgeons call the disease the 'bush scab ;' and that it: 
is occasioned by a filthy mode of life. The population of nativesds very;; 
small in proportion to the extent of the island : several causes may be al- 
leged for their smallness of numbers; the principal one is their having 
been driven about from place to place, by settlers taking new locations!;: 
another catise is the great destruction of the kangaroo, which obliges the 
natives to labor hard to procure food sufficient for their sustenance : this, 
and their having no means of procuring vegetables, besides being con- 
stantly exposed to the weather, together with their offensive habits of liv- 
ing, produce the disease above mentionedj with its fatal consequences." 

But the ensanguined administration of Sir George Arthur, has destroyed 
a great part of the native foresters, and reduced the number from seven-, 
teen-hundred, to about sixty, who are cooped up on a small island. in 
Bass's straits, where they are continually dwindling away; — no more per- 
mitted to roam over their native mouatains, and hunt in their lovely val- 
lies, or- dig a native bread,, (a kind of ball found in the earth, of the 
consistence of rice, like our ground-nut, only a. great deal, larger,) or 
learn the birds to lisp phrases in their native island. A few yeai's, and 
not one will remain. The Tasmanians will, rest amid the thousand, 
wrecks of innocence, that England delights to crush when it is in hex: 
power. But Grod will surely remember their unavenged wrongs — when, 
Indiav China, and Ireland — all who, have experienced the pressure of heP 
vampire; lips— and. the bloody murders: of Windsor, St. Eustache, St. 
Giiarles^St. Denis, and the butcheries of, Beauharnois, will rise up aswifcv 
nesses against her. She is red with sin, and the days of her oppressionsi 
aDe^mimbered. I here insert the inducenaents that.the English, govearn- 
ment held out, for the settlement of ¥an.Dieman's land: 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 3* 

"1. BPis majesty^P^Government do not intend to incur any expe7ise m^e^mi 
veying settlers to the new colony on the Swan river ; and will not feel 
bound to defray the expense of supplying them with provisions or other 
necessaries, after their arrival there, nor to assist their removing to 
England, or elsewhere, should they be desirous of quitting the colony; 

" 2. Such persons who may arrive in that settlement before the end .of 
the year 1830, will receive, in the order of their arrival, grants of land, 
free, of quit rent, proportioned to the capital which they may be prepared 
to invest in the improvement of the land, and of which capital they may 
be able to produce satisfactory proofs to the lieutenant governor (or other 
officer administering the colonial government,) or to any two officers of 
the local government appointed by the lieutenant governor for that pur- 
pose, at the rate of forty acres for every sum of three pounds which they 
may be prepared so to invest. 

" 3. Under the head of investment of capital, will be considered stock of 
every description, all implements of husbandry, and other articles which 
may be applicable to the purposes of productive industry, or which may 
be necessary for the establishment of the settler on the land- where he is 
to be located. The amount of any half-pay or pension which the appli;. 
cant may receive from Government, will also be considered as so rattcfe 
capital. 

" 4. Those who may incur the expense of taking out laboring persons, 
will be entitled to an allowance of land at the rate of fifteen pounds, that 
is, of two hundred acres of land, for the passage of every such laboring 
person, over and above any other investment of capital. In the class of 
' laboring persons,' are included women and children above ten years 
old. Provision will be made by law, at the earliest opportunity, for ren- 
dering those capitalists, who may be engaged in taking out laboring per- 
sons to this settlement, liable for the future maintenance of those persons, 
should they, from infirmity, or any other cause, become unable to main- 
tain themselves there. 

"5. The license of occupation of land will be granted to the settler, &&■ 
satisfactory proof being exhibited to the lieutenant governor (or other 
officer administering the local government,) of the amount of property- 
brought into the colony. The proofs required of such property will be 
such satisfactory vouchers of expenses as would be received in auditing 
public accounts. But the full title to the land will not be granted in fee 
simple, until the settler has proved, to the satisfaction- of the lieutenant- 
governor (or other officer administering the local government,) that the^ 
sum required by Article 2nd, of these regulations, (viz. one shilling- andt 
sixpence per acre,) has been expended in the cultivation of the land', or 
in solid improvements, such as buildings, roaxis, or other- works of tfee= 
kind, 

"6. Any grant of land thus allotted, of which^ a fair p?opor^«i', (rf-^at 
least one fourth, shall not have been brought into cultivation, otherwise 
improved or reclaimed from its wild state, to the extentof one shilling and 



32 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

sixpence per acre, to the satisfaction of the local Government, within three 
years from the date of the license of occupation, shall, at the end o^ three 
years, be liable to a payment of sixpence per acre, into the public chest li 
of the settlement ; and at the expiration of seven years more, should the 
land still remain in an uncultivated or unimproved state, it will revert 
absolutely to the crown." 

With the above inducements, the island has rapidly increased in 
population and wealth ; the Government always preserving the balance 
between the convicts and the free population. The tyranny of Arthur 
had driven many of the prisoners to desert and turn highway rob- 
bers, making their home amid the secret fastnesses of the mountains. 
Upon the island, they are termed bush-rangers. For many months the 
people were alarmed by several murders and robberies committed by 
some of these escaped felons, and the governor issued a proclamation that 
any one that would arrest the said bush-rangers, should receive a free 
pardon and a free passage from the colony. Several of the police con- 
stables had been severely wounded by them, and one had been killed — 
and no convict felt willing to volunteer in pursuit of the highwaymen. 
The governor now ordered all the prisoners, having tickets of leave, to go 
in pursuit. A number amounting to over fifteen hundred, were called out 
and divided into parties of from five to eight in each, headed by a police- 
man. We were armed with muskets. Several who refused to obey the 
oi'der were sent in irons to Port Arthur, a penal settlement, and were nev- 
er to receive the indulgence of the Government again while they remained 
prisoners of the crown. Our party consisted of six, Dresser and myself 
being the only Americans in it. After we had roamed over mountains, 
and across rivers and valleys for twelve days, and had nearly despaired 
of any success, we heard of a shepherd's hut, about three miles distant ; 
and as it had rained incessantly for the last two days, we wished to get to 
it and dry our clothes, cook some meat, and bivouac for the night. We all 
had separated, so that it might be impossible for it to escape our observation ; 
and when we reached it, we all came from different directions. When 
within about twenty rods of the hut, we saw two men, armed to the teeth, 
coming out of the door, and from the description, we knew them to be the 
brigands. When near them, our constable cried " halt ;" but they seem- 
ed to have just discovered us, and giving a wild look around them, they 
ran to the woods. We were ordered to follow them, and tb fire if they 
did not halt. They found that we gained ground, and each taking a tree, 
took steady aim at us from behind it ; but not one of their pieces would 
go off, as they had been out the last two days in steady rain. One was 
armed with a double-barrel gun and four pistols ; the other with a rifle, 
and the same number of small arms. After finding that resistance was 
useless, they surrendered in a very gentlemanly style. Jefs, the younger, 
begged our pardon for having been taken so cowardly, and not firing ; but 
he was very glad that what was his loss was our gain. I heard that he 
was a Gipsy by birth. He was what the world would call " devilish 



/ 



WRlOxHT'S NARRATIVE. 33 

handsome ;" dark eyes, long eye-lashes ; and in his dress, was as neat and 
trim as a French dandy. His face was of a melancholy cast, and his 
form the perfection of manliness. He said death was a fate he preferred 
to the life of a convict. His companion, Conway, did not relish his fate 
quite so well. They had robbed a house a few days before, and in the 
drunken revel which followed, he had received a very severe wound in 
his groin ; and liis comrade had clung to him with great fidelity during 
his sufferings. They had been without food for two days, and had left 
their cavern that morning in search of it. Both preferred death to the 
rtures ot^ a felon's life. I visited their cave, upon the side of a moun- 
lin ; and if they had had plenty of provisions, they would have been secure 
years : the hole at the mouth v/as just large enough to admit a man's 
ly, and was concealed by bushes and moss. They were tried and con- 
victed, and sentenced to death. Jefs made a very remarkable defence ; 
arid died, as he had lived, a fearless dare-devil. They Avere not execu- 
ted until after we had left the island. From the time of their capture, 
wevconsidered ourselves freemen ; our fondest hopes were realized, and 
in &)irit I had already visited friends and home. We were detained upon 
thelsland for several weeks, until we had been sworn before one of the 
judles of the Court of Queen's Bench, and our persons fully identified. 
Th4 principal director of convicts offered us the £25 and a situation 
under the Government, which we declined ; but two of the six accepted 
the offer, and remained. We told the director if he would give us his 
situalion, worth £3,000, it would be no temptation for us to stay. He 
then 'turned to me, and asked " If I would again interfere with the 
British Government in Canada ?" I told him " not until the Canadians 
were worthier of liberty than they are at present." On the 22nd of June, 
1843, we received our free pardon, the following being a true copy : 



r\li; 



"Van Dieman's Land, (No. 84.) 
By 'His Excellency, Sir John Franklin, Knight Commander of the 
Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, Knight of the Greek Order of the 
Redeemer, and a Captain in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor of the Island of Van Dieman's Land and its dependencies. 

" Whereas, Stephen Smith Wright, who arrived at Hobart Town by the 
ship Buffarlo, in the year 1840, under a sentence of transportation for life, 
passed upon him at the Province of Upper Canada, in the year 1838, hath, 
by his good conduct and behavior, during his residence in this island, 
appeared to me, the said Lieutenant Governor, to be a fit object for the 
extension to him of an absolute remission of his sentence : Now, there- 
fore, in consideration of the premises, I, the Lieutenant Governor afore- 
said, by virtue of the powers and authorities in me in his behalf vested, 
do, by tliis instrument, absolutely remit all the residue or remainder of 
the time or term of transportation yet to come or unexpired, of or under 
the said sentence so passed upon the said Stephen Smith Wright, as afore- 
said, and tlie same is hereby remitted accordingly. 
3 



34 WRIGHTS NARRATIVE. 

"■ L. S. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto' set my hand, and 
caused also the seal of Van Dieman's land, and its depend- 
encies, to be hereunto affixed, at Hobart Town, in Van Die- 
Register E. man's land, aforesaid ; this twenty-second day of June, in 
Folio 28. j^j^g ygg^j^. qI" q^j, Lord, one thousand eight hundred and forty- 
three. 

JOHN FRANKLIN." 
"J. E. RiETENO, Colonial Secretary, and Register." 

It is upon parchment, and the book contains my '-description," as ta- 
Ken on the deck of the Buffalo, the day before we landed. 

The present state of the American prisoners should excite the sympa- 
thy of every feeling man. But one of my companions has married on 
the island ; and if he is ever pardoned, will, doubtless, make it his home 
for life. But it grieved me to see Chauncy Sheldon, who fought the Brit- 
ish at Lundy's lane, — aged, and white-haired — toiling, an exile, among 
the convicts ; far from home, fireside, and kindred. The most of our 
number have, at present, broken constitutions, and are pining for their 
native land. Scions of liberty rarely flourish on the soil of oppression ; and 
death at once would be far preferable, than to end your days by .some 
slow disease ; and know that it was sapping to the dregs the fountain of 
your existence. Six have already found peace and liberty in the grave ; 
and the pallid faces, and attenuated forms of several others, show that 
they are not far from that bourne from whence no traveller returns. And 
if they are ever pardoned, (and I know no reason in the world, to 
suppose that England would have mercy enough to do so God-like an 
act,) their friends must not be surprised to find dim eyes, care-worn brows, 
and wrinkled faces, as well as gray hair — all brought on by inhuman ex- 
posure to the weather, and two years spent in toiling beyond our strength. 



CHAPTERVI. 

Van Dieman's Land— Its discovery— Climate— Inhabitants— Productions— MineraJogy— Ornithology— Zo- 
ology — Botany — Its present condition, &c. 

Van Dieman's land is an insular appendage to the southern part of New 
Holland, but of much smaller dimensions. It lies between 40° 42' and 
43° 43' South latitude ; and 144° 31' and 148° 22' West longitude ; and is 
reckoned by Freycinet, to contain an area of twenty-seven thousand one 
hundred and ninety-two square miles. In general, it is composed of al- 
ternate hill and dale ; and even the high downs are generally fit either 
for cultivation or pasturage. The chief lines, both of mountain and 
river, run from north to south, through the eastern part of the colony. 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE, ||5 

Mount Wellington ; the most elevated hill in the island, nearly overhangs 
the southern settlement of Hobart Town — rising to the hight of 3936 feet- 
being covered for nine months in the year with snow, and subject to vio- 
lent whirlwinds. The northern peaks are called Ben Lomond and 
Tasman, and are also considerable. But the chain of most continuous 
elevation, is that nearly in the centre of the island, called the Western 
Mountains, which extend north and south, for its whole length. They 
possess a general height of thirty-five hundred feet ; inclose several large 
lakes — one said to be sixty miles in circumference — and give rise to the 
principal rivers in the island. Among these, is the Taniar, which, 
uniting the waters of the North and South Eske from the east, of the 
Macguarie and Lake rivers from the south, and of the Western river 
from the west, forms at Launceston a navigable stream, which soon opens 
into the broad estuary of Port Dairy mple, on the north side of the island. 
The Derwent flowing in an opposite direction, and swelled by the parallel 
stream of the Jordan, spreads into a noble harbor on the southeast side 
of the island, on which Hobart Town is situated. Two rivers on the west- 
ern side enter Macguarie harbor; but their course is yet unexplored. 
The harbors of Van Dieman's land surpass those of any country in the 
world, not excepting even the admirable ones of New South Wales. 
This island was first discovered by Tasman, who surveyed its southern 
and western shores, but not the northern and eastern ; with which we are 
almost exclusively acquainted. It was afterward observed, in parts, by 
Marion, Ferneaux, Cook, and particularly by D'Eutricasteau, who traced 
the remarkable channel which bears his name. All this time, however, 
it was believed to be a part of the continent ; nor was it till Bass, in 1798, 
passed through the straits, which are called after him, that its insular 
character was established. In 1808, Captain Bowen founded the first 
convict establishment, at Risdon cove, on the left hand of the Derwent ; 
which was removed, in 1804, by Colonel Collins to Hobart Town, on the 
right bank, in Sullivan cove, about twelve miles up the river. Since that 
time, the colony has been in a state of rapid increase ; particularly, du- 
ring the last ten or twelve years, when it became the favorite resort of 
voluntary emigration. 

The climate of Van Dieman's Land belongs decidedly to the temperate 
zone, and is therefore more cool and congenial to a British constitution, 
than that of the original colony. It has not the same extremes of bar- 
renness and fertility ; there are some rich flats along the rivers, but in 
general, the lands are somewhat high and of a medium aptitude, both for 
agriculture and pasturage. A greater proportion of it is quite clear of 
wood, and admits of the plough being applied without any previous pre- 
paration. On the road from Hobart Town to Port Dalrymple, there is a 
plain extending in one direction for tAventy miles, and clear land is frequent 
on the north side of the island. The climate is not favorable to the growth 
of maize, tobacco, and especially sugar ; but wheat, barley and oats, are 
poduced of superior quality. The potatoes are equal to any in the 



30 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

world, and will keep through the year. The cattle are rather good ; the 
sheep produce fine wool, though not quite equal to that of New South 
Wales ; but this has, perhaps, been from want of care, and great efforts 
are making for ita improvement. This land wants the cedar and rose- 
wood of the great continent of New Holland ; but the black- wood, the 
hoar pine, and Adventure Bay pine, are valuable trees, peculiar to it. 

The natives of Van Dieman's Land are guessed by Hassel at only 
fifteen hundred, and are, if possible, in a lower state than even those of 
the great continent. They are strangers to fishing, and to the construc- 
tion of even the rudest canoes ; but convey themselves in miserable rafts 
over any water they are obliged to cross. They are unacquainted with 
the throwing-stick ; their spears are much less formidable, and their dis- 
position more peaceable ; but, unfortunately, they have been inflamed 
with the most deadly hatred against the English. This deplorable cir- 
cumstance appears to have been solely owing to the rashness of an officer, 
who, at an early period of the settlement, fired upon a party approaching, 
as there was afterward reason to believe, with the most peaceable in- 
tentions. This incident appears to have made a permanent impression 
upon the minds of these savages ; for ever since that time, they have 
seized every opportunity of attacking and killing the colonists ; but the 
smallness of their numbers and lack of courage, has rendered their en- 
mity far from terrible. 

The British population is considered to form the most completely Eng- 
lish colony that exists ; yet the state of society is, on the whole, wilder 
that at Port Jackson ; in particular, the most desperate convicts have been 
sent there, as a place of ulterior punishment. Numbers escaped, and 
formed a body of bush-rangers, who kept the colony in a state of perpetual 
alarm, and have only been very recently put down. The Government 
supports a male and female orphan school and seven public day schools. 
The exports consist of wool, wheat, salted beef, mutton, hams and tongues, 
with some hides, tallow, seal-skins, whale-oil, and spars. Several news- 
papers are published at Hobart Town and Launceston ; Hobart Town 
has one of the finest harbors in the world. The mineral productions of 
the island are extremely meagre, viz. granite, mica slate, granular quartz, 
ancient sandstone, and limestone, resembling that of England. There 
is also an extensive coal-mine, worked by the convicts near Port Arthur, 
which is of a very good quality. Oolite, syenite and serpentine, are rarely 
met with ; yet when found, they make very fine specimens, from their 
peculiar structure. Fossil-wood and coal formations are found, very 
perfectly preserved, and splendid specimens of Coniferse have been for- 
warded to England. Some of the shells of Van Dieman's Land are very 
highly prized by collectors, especially the family of Volutes, which are 
here chiefly found in great perfection. 

It is Van Dieman's Land, says a great naturalist, " where it is summer, 
when it is winter in Europe, and vice versa ; where the barometer rises 
before bad weather and falls before good— where the north is the hot wind 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 37 

and the south the cold — where the humblest house is fitted up with cedar, 
and the fields are fenced with mahogany, and myrtle-trees are burned for 
fuel — -where the swans are black and the eagles white— where the kan- 
garoo, an animal between the squirrel and the deer, has five claws on its 
fore paws, and three talons on its hind legs like a bird, and yet hops on 
its tail — where the mole (ornithorlynchus paradoxus) lays eggs and has 
a duck's bill — where thc5 fish have wings, and sail through the air — 
where the pears are made of wood, and with the stalk at the broader end, 
and tlie cherry, (exocarpas cupressiformis) grows Avith the stone on the 
outside." The birds make up for the scantiness of the zoological speci- 
mens in this region, the kangaroo being the largest of the four-footed ani- 
mals ; but these wonderful creatures, instead of fabricating warm and 
skillful nests beneath the earth for the protection of their young, in like 
manner to all other mouse-like quadrupeds, are provided with a natural 
nest in the folds of their own skin, where the young are sheltered and 
protected until they are able to provide for themselves. 

The duck-bill mole has long excited the scepticism and astonishment 
of naturalists ; Avho beheld in these creatures the perfect bill of a duck, 
ingrafted as it were on the body of a mole-like quadruped. It was first 
made known to the world by Dr. Shaw, who clearly demonstrated il 
was no fictitious deception. The whole animal lias some resemblance in 
miniature to an otter ; but is only thirteen inches long. It swims well, 
and indeed seldom quits the water, since the extreme shortness of its legs 
renders it only able to crawl on land. These animals, of which there 
appear to be two species, (distinguished only by their color,) are princi- 
pally found near Port Jackson. The foot of the mole is armed with a 
spur, through which passes a poisonous liquor, rendering the animal dan- 
gerous. It has lately been clearly proved that these duck-moles not only 
lay eggs, but suckle their young. These two strange species of ani- 
mals, and several tribes of opossums, and two kinds of phalangers, make 
up the zoology of this remarkable region. The seal is found very com- 
mon upon the shores, and the rivers abound with fish of the most delicate 
flavor. The first, the rarest, and by far the most magnificent bird of 
Van Dieman's Land, is the black cockatoo ; it is found only in the most 
retired parts of the island ; and from its head falls a glorious spray of 
lemon-colored plumes, well relieved by a body of glossy, velvet feathers, 
of an ebon blackness. They are seldom if ever tamed, and are consid- 
ered a great rarity, even upon the island. The white cockatoo is very 
common, and it speaks, when well trained, with much more distinctness 
of enunciation than the best parrot. The color is generally a creamy 
white, and the straw-colored plumage adorns the head with great beauty. 
I brought one of the last mentioned birds, as a kind of token of my slave- 
ry, within seven days' sail of London, when it died ; he could speak 
many words with great accuracy of tone, especially " sweet home," and 
other short sentences ; and I much regretted his death. There is another 
kind of cockatoo, similar to the first one described, with one or two bands 



38 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

of the richest scarlet upon the back and tail : but it is not as i"are as the 
black species. Parrots of every variety gem the luxurious foliage of the 
forests, and from arnbng them, for beauty, I would choose the Rose-hill 
parrot : blue, crimson and orange make up the plumage of this nonpa- 
reil bird . Paroquets are about as beautiful, but of a much smaller size. 
Of the last mentioned birds, I possessed four when I parted from the isl- 
and, but all died beneath the tropics. The pigeons and doves are cer- 
tainly the most beautiful in the world : the general tint of their plumage 
being a rich green, variegated with red, purple and yellow, about the head 
and breast ; but others occur of a brown color, relieved by spots on the 
wings, of the most changeable colors, equal in brilliancy to the finest 
gems. There is a small bird, with a tongue like a brush, called the etnu, 
scarcely larger than a wren, with a long tail, perfectly transparent, 
consisting of one bifurcated feather — similar to its namesake of New 
Holland. The spotted grosbeak is a most elegant bird, not larger than a 
bulfmch, and is easily domesticated. It is of a light slate-color above, 
v/ith a bill and rump of a deep crimson ; the throat has a black collar, 
and the sides have snow-white spots. The wedge-tailed eagle is often 
seen soaring above the mountains, and the milk-Avhite and jet-black swans 
make a home upon the lakes and rivers. All oceanic birds are par- 
ticularly numerous. The island abounds in shrubs of great beauty, and 
a countless variety of flowers. Dame Nature dropped some of her 
choicest seeds in this land of exile. The most numerous of the forest 
trees are of the genus Eucalyplus, commonly called black, white, red, 
and yellow gums ; there are about fifty different kinds upon the island. 
The most remarkable is the yellow gum tree, which attains the size of our 
tallest beeches, growing straight for about fifteen or twenty feet, after which 
it branches out into long spiral leaves, which hang down on all sides, and re- 
semble those of the largest kind of grass. From the centre of these leaves 
springs a single foot stock, eighteen or twenty feet high, terminating in a 
spike, not unlike an ear of wheat : but the valuable part of this plant is its 
resin, the properties of which vie with the most fragrant balsams. This 
gum exudes spontaneously from the bark ; yet still more so from incisions. 
This tree is not as common as the red gum, which, near Port Jackson, 
attains the height of a hundred and fifty feet, with a girth at the base of 
from twenty-five to fifty feet. The bark of these trees scales off, and 
their leaves, being evergreen, fall so invisibly that they seem, to a casual 
observer, rather to shed their bark instead of their leaves. There is also 
the banken, the peppermint, the oak, male and female, the black-wood, 
bog- wood, and the cherry. Of the thousatids of glorious plants, I shall 
speak of but one, (Doryanthes excelsa) or the lily of Van Dieman's 
Land. It is, without doubt, tiie most stately of the nobles of the floral 
kingdom. It attains the height of ten feet, bearing at its summit a 
crown of blossoms of the richest crimson, each three inches in diameter. 
The leaves are very long, of a dusky green, harsh to the feeling and of 
a sword's sharpness, and many of them four feet in length. I have seen 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. §9 

a dozen orioles, of every tint of the rainbow, fluttering about this fine 
lily of a morning ; and the woods echoed Avith the harsh voices of the 
parrot, and the glancing wings of the pigeons, while the sweet melody 
of the superb warbler and the jacose, made up a scene of fairy-like singu- 
larity, which no country but Australia and her islands can produce. 

There are two specimens of natural history, that I have i>eglected to 
describe, and which I now will try to give my readers a faint idea of. 
The first, is the dog-faced opossum ; it suggests the union of the dog and 
the tiger. The fur is soft, short, and of a yellowish brown ; the sides of 
the body being marked by broad transverse stripes of black, which do 
not, however, extend' to the belly ; the tail is compressed, and it is a fine 
swimmer, inhabiting the rocks upon the sea-shore, and feeding upon fish. 
The second is the coal-black swan, with its graceful neck and wings, 
gleaming like polished ebony ; it has a very peculiar eye, and when the 
sun strikes it, obliquely, it radiates and glows like fresh cut diamond. 
They pair two and two. I have often met with a solitary one, who, hav- 
ing lost its mate, lives his century in solitude, (they are said to live one 
hundred years,) displaying a constancy that humans would do well to im- 
itate. It was a great favorite with the Tasmanian natives, who prized 
very highly its jetty down ; as they made rugs of its skin, for their new 
born children. The white swans are not so numerous ; yet no fellow- 
ship is sought between the two ; showing plainly that they are no araalga- 
mationists, as they shun, though solitary, each other's society. There are 
ground parrots, with long spiked tails, and a spotted plumage, which are 
never known to perch upon a tree ; their feathers are of every shadow 
of loveliness. The ground rorrakat, blue-breasted, is of remarkable 
beauty ; these last birds are generally found in flocks. There are sev- 
eral kinds of reptiles ; among them the diamond serpent, of three feet in 
length, covered with a coat of a mail, in fine scales, which sparkle with 
great brilliancy ; its bite is fatal : also the adder, with black and striped 
snakes ; several kinds of lizards, and scorpions, and insects of almost every 
variety have a home in Van Dieman's land. It was formerly inhabited by 
a race, known as Tasmanians ; but that vampire of the deep, England, 
has sent them (after dwindling their number from seventeen hundred to 
sixty,) to perish upon a small barren island, called Bruno, in Bass's 
Straits : in a few years they will be extinct. 

The free population of the whole island, at present, is about sixty thou- 
sand, of whom near twenty-five thousand were transported convicts ; 
but now are free froin servitude or indulgence. The amount of convicts, 
both male and female, who are still prisoners, no better than slaves, is 
about twenty-five thousand. The proportion of female convicts is about, 
or over one third ; and of the free, about one half. Thus we have a pop- 
ulation for Van Dieman's land of free males, thirty-three thousand five 
hundred ; of male prisoners, about fifteen thousand six hundred ; of fe- 
male convicts, seven thousand five hundred • making, in the aggregate, 
geventy-three thousand inhabitants, or human beings j twenty-two thou- 



40 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

sand being mete dwellers. We also see that forty-three thousand have 
been transported thither, being convicted of crimes of every shade. Dr. 
Ross (the publisher of an almanac and government paper, in Hobart 
Town, for a few years) says, they are criminals selected from the worst 
offenders at home ; not only the worst characters that England could 
produce in a year, but they are, actually, the worst that can be taken 
in an accumulation of several years. And add to this statement, that 
Van Dieman's land is yet a receptacle for all the New South Wales 
offenders, doubly convicts ; — a set of characters, it must be presumed, not 
very likely to shake off old habits of gross immorality, intemperance, 
brutality and crime. Imagine, for a moment, the extent of this mass of 
crime and infamy, and then say what you think of the state of society il 
must engender. The disproportion of females to the males, induces the 
Government to empty the brothels of London, Dublin, Liverpool and 
Edinburgh ; giving all a free passage between the ages of sixteen and' 
thirty ; and Mr. Benjamin Wait, to whom I am indebted for some of the 
above facts, says : " I have been acquainted with a number of these 
bounty emigrant women ; and I fain would close my eyes against the 
truth, and restrain my pen from writing it, but am constrained to say, 
what I have repeatedly heard from the best individuals here, ' that female 
virtue , is rarely known in Van Dieman's land.'" The very amuse- 
ments of the people, show the brutishness of their taste ; the " ring," or 
pugilistic combats being preferred to all others. I have seen hundreds 
of women at the prize fights, enjoying the excitement with as much gusto 
as the women of my native land a tea-party gossiping. The beastly 
drunkenness, and the low state of morals, (there are, in fact, no morals 
at all,) give birth to vice ; and when the poor dying gladiator falls, with 
bruised body and lanced eyes, covered with blood and dust, female voi- 
ces raise the cry of victory. Shakespere hath too truly said, " frailty, thy 
name is woman." 



CHAPTER VII. 

Embark for Europe — View of the island ftom the sea — Farewell to Van Dieman's Land — ^The whale, and 
other denizens of the deep — Arrival at London — Misery of the lower fclasses, and luxury of the rich — 
Victoria Cobourg — Embark for New-York — Return home. 

On the 22nd day of July, 1843, we embarked in the Areta, a brig of three 
hundred and twenty tons, loaded with wool and oil, with twenty souls on 
board. Language is impotent to describe the rapturous joy of our hearts, 
as the dark isle of felons glimmered away in the distance ; yet there 
was sadness in thinking of their tear-wet eyes, bronzed cheeks, and the 
warm pressure of their hard hands, and the choked " God bless you," that 
burst from full hearts, when we bid them good-bye — our faithful dear exile 
comrades ; and to think they must wait for the mercy of that Govern- 
ment, which hath never tried to spell that blessed word. Ask St Helena 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 41 

and she Avill point you to the vacant grave of Napoleon Bonaparte — an 
empty monument of British mercy. Ask the damp dungeons of Mary 
Queen of Scotts, and the black scaffold will reply " this is British mercy." 
Afck the yet green grave of Emmet, and the dewy grass, wet with a, nation's 
terrs will whisper, "this is British mercy !'' 

No scene in the world ever looked so bright to me as Van Dieman's 
Land from the sea. A silver veil hung mid-way upon Mount Wellington, 
and I gazed upon the rock-bound coast, and tears filled my eyes to think that 
but a broken band were returning to their home beyond the sea. Evening 
came on, and T bid farewell to Van Dieman's Land for ever. Our passage 
■Nvas very stoi-my ; for weeks the wind blew a perfect hurricane, while 
doubling Cape Horn. I here saw the sperm whale, a noble animal whose 
affection makes the female revenge herself upon that boat which is unfor- 
tunate in capturing her young. They «,re of a brown color, and enjoyed 
themselves in sporting in freedom amid their ocean waves. We passed 
two barren rocks that may serve England to incarcerate prisoners of state 
upon, wiien all her otiier places of punishment are filled. I would 
that the base murderers of the broken-hearted Lady Flora Hastings had 
a retreat upon one of them, and Victoria Cobourg may yet be glad to get 
as good a place as Van Dieman's Land, to save her own head from the 
scaffold. 

The dolphin is one of the most beautiful creatures of the sea; when 
dying, it sends forth all the colors of the rainbow, every death-pang giving 
a brighter hue — resembling in metaphor, a good man's death-bed, his 
last day being the morst glorious. We found, also, the flying fish, that 
strange mixture offish and bird, connecting the air and water tribes by a 
visible link. They sail gently over the waves, leaving the water when 
chased by the dolphin, and returning to it when out of reach. We caught 
two that were preserved, and they retained their color and form admira- 
bly. The most ravenous of all the sea tribes, is the shark — the king of 
the sea. We caught an enormous one with a bait of pork ; its teeth re- 
sembled a saw newly filed. The legend of their scenting the sick on board 
vessels and following them for days, has long since exploded before the 
light of knowledge. When beneath the equator, we began to admire 
those aerial landscapes, (see Note 12th,) varying and changing in forms 
of fleeting beauty. The poet has well described them in the following 
lines : 

" There peers (lie forest's dark strata of cloud, 
Fane, arbor and altar — sepulchre and shroud ; 
The arrny in battle, the fleet on the wave, 
The rock and its grotto, the hermit and cave, 
The dome of the city, its palace and spire. 
The snow-covered peak with its bosom on fire. 
As the scenery of drama they come and retire. 
Xow the rock and tlie grot are the low urn surrounding, 
Tlie army and fleet on the forest top bounding ; 
The palace and dome grape the peak of the mountain, 
Its bosom of flame is the gush ef the fountain. 



42 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

Thus the chaos of clouds o'er an ocean of blue, 
TrembUngly vanish and boldly renew, 
Like the wearied in war on the flight of defeat : 
Like the charge of the brave on the coward's retreat." 

In the monotony of a long sea voyage, we learn to turn our thoughts 
to the skies, and the sight of a bird is an event of interest, and the passing 
of a ship gives the heart a peculiar kind of joy, to know that others have 
trusted their fate upon the waters as well as yourself; and the sight of 
spar, plank, or cask, floating upon the billows, awake the reflection of those 
who have left the land to return no more. 

After being at sea four months and twenty-six days, the white cliffs of 
Dover shone brightly above the waters, and the land of the despot greeted 
my eyes ; and in three days I trod the streets of London- where we land- 
ed on the . As I paced th»streets. poverty of every description, and 

misery of e.v,ery shade, met my eyes. There might be seen mothers im- 
ploring a penny to buy bread for starving children ; able-bodied men, gaunt 
with hunger, scraping the sewers for food, and devouringit like dogs ; chil- 
da-en, naked as at the hour of their birth, raising their little hands for the mis- 
erable tribute of this world's charity ; — I wondered not at the crimes which 
unjust laws had driven them to commit, or that the merciless Government, 
not to be troubled witli their agonized groans and dying curses, transfer them 
to a place where royal and loyal ears would never hear — much less grant 
the prayers of the starving paupers and dymg infants ; and for the most triv- 
ial offence. Botany Bay is the husher of their sighs and soother of their woes. 
There wanders the friendless outcast, once the tenant of yonder princely 
hall ; but the lust of her lordly seducer satisfied, she is left houseless in the 
streets of London. In vain may she implore aid, mercy, protection ; — in 
vain does the miserable babe cling to her breast ; its little hands will 
soon relax their grasp, for the death stare is upon its mild blue eyes. 
Crazed, forlorn, distressed — God only knows what will be her fate. 

In yonder carriage rides the Duchess of S * * * * d ; a thousand pounds 
glitters in her tui-nout — hoi'ses, carriage, housings, and attendants. Her 
husband sits by her side — the poor hen-pecked creature, with the tyrant's 
eye, and the despot's heart beating under that mean exterior. What, 
think you, was the price of those diamond bracelets which dazzle, as sun- 
light, upon her snowy arms ? Let the lives and bodies of poor women, 
harnessed to the drays in the loathsome coal mines, whose eyes have not 
seen God's daylight for months, and whose lips have not tasted a morsel 
of wholesome bread for years upon her estate — answer. What, think you, 
the price of her velvet and ermine cloak, and of her cap, adorned with 
pearls, and the gems that glitter upon her aristocratic hand ; or of the 
necklace of rubies, flashing upon her bosom of beauty ? Let the de- 
formed children, and the famished mothers, who have toiled in his grace's 
factories, answer. How dear is bread — but flesh and blood ! oh ! God ! 
how cheap ! I saw Victoria Cobourg, surrounded by her lords and 
ladies, whose dresses were of every texture in the world, glittering 
with jewels and gleaming in gold j and 1 thought of the starving mass- 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 48 

ses, whose money and life had been crushed out of them to support this 
extravagance ; and my heart was sick of that bitter satire to every hon- 
est Briton — " Hurrah for happy England !" If what I saw was happiness, 
what is misery ? Who has the moral courage to see the smoking bread 
of a well filled bakery, and yet starve to death ? yet many have so died 
in London ; thousands, and yet the half is not told. And if one morsel 
of that bread is taken, when no work can be had, the doom is transpor- 
tation for life ; while Prince Albert, that pauper upon England's bounty, 
riots upon thirty thousand pounds per annum. Many could have been em- 
ployed to do the state the same service he does, at a much cheaper rate. 
I saw him with the field martials' star upon his breast, and covered with 
gaudy finery. It added nothing to its beauty to know, that it had been 
washed in the tears and blood of the poverty-stricken ones of England. 

" God, wlio hath heard the widow's cry, 
God, who hath seen the orphan's inoau. 
None 'round thee of famine die. 

Although thou sittest on a throne. 
Things lilie these, of regal birth, 

WIio boast tlieir princely right divine, 
Are but thy parodies on earth ; 

Their's is oppression — mercy thine." 

Wherever I went, degradation, vice and misery, were ever before me ; 
and a starving nation's bitter tears bedewed my path. And what is the 
liberty of England ? What has been her nobleness, and magnanimity ? 
Has she any ? Did she not quarter Wallace — murder Mary, Queen of 
Scotts — execute Raleigh — shoot Byng— -and strangle Carraccioli ? Did she 
not give Napoleon the vulture and the rock ? Did she not shield the de- 
fame rs of the house of Hastings — fetter India — devour Spain — persecute 
in Affghanistan — and butcher in China — and cheat Ireland of her parlia- 
ment — and shed enough blood in Canada to make a fountain play for 
weeks, to amuse her majesty and her cabinet ? Has she not supported 
the odious Bourbons upon the the throne of a Bonaparte, and helped the 
Austrian despot to establish the vilest tyranny in the Roman -States ? Tell 
me a country under God's heaven where she has the power, that she does not 
secure the lion's half to herself? Has she not shackled the press, pro- 
scribed authors, and incarcerated printers in prison dens ; and carried on 
the adious tithe system over the height and breadth of her land, for the 
support of a religion, begot in licentiousness, and born in butchery ? — whose 
first union with the state was baptized in the tears of the populace ; and 
whose first founder drank the blood of innocent women and noble men, 
as if it had been water ; and whose priests are yet hypocrites in church 
and Satans at home. Sure this is the shame of England without one ray 
of her glory. Sure this is the ineanness of England, without one shadow 
of her magnanimity. The day of Great Britain's retribution will come, 
amid the awful thunderings of God, whose images have been destroyed 
and defaced by her most unrighteous laws? when the Herodess who 
now sits upon a throne of gold, clothed in purple and fine linen, shall be 
«ast down, and with her blood alone can atonement be made for the thou- 



44 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

sand starving mothers, and v/itbered children who have perished in their 
shrivelled arms. The First Charles's fate is not yet forgotten by the dem- 
ocratic hearts of England ; and the spirit of Cromwell now burns in a 
thousand crushed and bruised hearts — and the scaffold of Louis the Six- 
teenth beacons forth the fact, that the people may, if they will, be free. 
The materials are noAV gathering, whose combustion will shiver the 
bloofly throne of despotism to atoms ; and the title of " king" is yet to be 
unknown upon the face of the earth. Her cup is not yet filled: the fam- 
ished stealers of bread — the oppressed of the loathsome mines and horrid 
factories — the outcast mothers and the starveling children, have yet to be 
avenged ; for '' vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, " and I will repay it." 

^J: * * * * * * 

The American minister, Mr. Everett, was very kind, and procured us 
a passage to New-York. My companion, Mr. Dresser, was ill during a 
greater part of the voyage, and was confined to his room while here. 
The streets were lighted at mid-day with gas, and the fog was very dense, 
so that I never saw the sun but once while I was in London, something 
over two weelvs.. We now embarked on board the Quebec, and after be- 
ing at sea six weeks, we came in sight of my native land. That night I 
slept but little ; my joy was beyond the power of words — I felt with the 
poet : 

" Speed, speed, my dear vessel, the tliore is in sight — 
The sea-breeze is fair, we shall anchor lo-riight. 
To-morrow at sunrise, once more shall 1 stanil 
On the sea-beaten shore of my own native land." 

I would here thank the generous-hearted William Lyon Mackenzie, 
whose gentlemanly sympathy and hospitality was extended to us while in 
the city ; and in the coui'se of a few days the prodigal son had returned 
to the house of his father. Through all my wanderings, a kind of guid- 
ing power, as if to answer the prayers of my aged father, preserved me 
from danger and despair, and at last guided me back to his arms. The 
joy of being with my brothers and sisters, kindred and friends ; and the 
crowded assemblies who hailed me home, made me feel more as if I was 
in a pleasant dream than a stern reality. I bless God, who hath snatch- 
ed me from the hands of the oppressor ; and my dear father, in the full- 
ness of his heart, truly exclaimed: "This my son was dead, and is alive 
again — he was lost and is found !" 

I here insert the letter which the editors of the New-York Tribune 
kindly published, that any who may read this work, can have an oppor- 
tunity of inquiring by mail after their exiled friends : 

'= New-Yokk, February 17th, 1844. 
" To the Edltars of The Tribune : 

" The undersigned were engaged with Col. Von Schoultz in the affair of 
the Windmill, near Prcscott, in November, 1838. They were tried by a 
militia court-martial at Kingston, Canada, and sentenced to death, but sent 



WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 45 

lo Van Dieman's land as convicts ; where, after a residence of nearly four 
years, they were forgiven and allowed to return to their native country 
by Sir John Franklin, the British governor. 

" On our voyage out, we doubled the Cape of Good Hope ; on our voy- 
age home, we doubled Cape Horn — performing, in all, a journey of upward 
of thirty thousand miles, and sailing once, at least, round the world. 

" As there are fifty-four of our comrades who were under Von ScRoultz, 
still in captivity, we think it a duty to them and their relatives, to offer 
the public an accovmt of their present circumstances, so far as the same 
are known to us. 

'• To do this in the most satisfactory manner, we here name them seve- 
rally. They are all in tolerable health, except Thomas Stockton, who 
is in a consumption. Severe treatment and other causes, which it would 
only excite unkind feelings for us to dwell upon, have made great ini"oads 
upon many constitutions, once very strong ; and should it be the pleasure 
of the British Government to release them, seeing that it is on the most 
friendly terms with ours, and perfect peace prevailing on this continent, 
their wives, sisters, parents and other relatives may expect to meet with 
men broken down, care-worn, or in many, if not in most cases, friends who 
have painfully endured a very heavy, and, as some think, most unmeri- 
ted bondage. 

" Their names are : David Allen, Orlin Blodgett, George T. Brown, 
Robert G. Collins, Luther Darby, William Gates, John Morrisset, James 
Pearce, Joseph Thomson, John Berry, Chauncey Bugby, Patrick AVhite, 
Thomas Baker, John Cronkhite, John Thomas, Nathan Whiting, Riley 
Whitney, Edward A. Wilson, Samuel Washburn, Bemis Woodbury, John 
Bradley, James Inglish, Joseph Lafore, Daniel Liscomb, Hiram Loop, 
Calvin and Chauncey Matthews, Andrew Moore, Jehiel H. Martin, Hugh 
Calhoun, Leonard Delano, Moses A. Dutcher, Elon Fellowes, Michael 
Frier, Manuel Garrison, Gideon A. Goodrich, Nelson and Jeremiah Griggs, 
John Gillman, Daniel D. Heustis, Garret Hicks, David House, Hiram 
Sharp, Henry'Shew, Orin W. Smith, Joseph W. Stewart, Foster Martin, 
Ira Polly, Jacob Paddock, William and Solomon Reynolds, Asa H. 
Richardson, and John G. Swansburgh. Also T. Stockton, who is in ill_ 
health. 

" The following Prescott prisoners are dead : Anson Owen, Asa Priest, 
Lysander Curtis, John Stuart of Ohio, William Nottage, and Andrew 
Leaper. 

•' The above are nearly all Americans. The prisoners from Windsor 
and the Short Hills, partly Canadian and partly from the United States, 
are in tolerable health, except Robert Marsh, who is consumptive. Their 
names are, Chauncey Sheldon, Elijah C. Woodman, Michael Murray, 
John H. Simmons, Alvin B. Sweet, Simeon Goodrich, James M. Acheson, 
Elijah Stevens, John C. Williams, Samuel Snow, Riley M. Stewart, John 
Sprague, John B. Tyrrell, James. De Witt Fero, Henry V. Barnum, John 



46 WRIGHT'S NARRATIVE. 

Varnum, James Waggoner, Norman Mallory, Horace Cooley, John Grant, 
Lynus W. Miller (student at law,) and Joseph Stewart. 

" Of these, L. W. Miller and Joseph Stewart are at Port Arthur, a 
place of additional punishment. They attempted to recover their free- 
dom, and suffer accordingly. 

" The prisoners were in hopes that when President Tyler and Mr. 
Webster concluded the late Treaty with Britain, through Lord Ashbur- 
ton, and when Canada got a new constitution, their hard fate would be 
remembered ; but no one of these on the island knows of any steps taken 
for a release. Mr. Everett, our minister at London, told us he was do- 
ing what he could for his unhappy countrymen, but thought it was very 
doubtful whether they would be allowed again to see their native land. 
We were five months on the passage from Van Dieman's Land to Lon- 
don, and Mr. Everett got us a ship to New- York. 

" We say it with truth and sincerity, that we would not of choice pass 
the rest of our lives on Van Dieman's Land, if the Avhole island were 
given to us in freehold as a gift ; and as there can be no fear that our un- 
fortunate friends who remain there will ever again desire to interfere with 
Canada, we would entreat the generous and humane to exert themselves 
to procure their release. We have not to complain of unusual harshness 
toward ourselves, and yet both of us have often wished to be relieved by 
death from the horrid bondage entailed on those who were situated as we 
were. To be obliged to drag out an existence in such a convict colony, 
and among such a population, is, in itself, a punishment severe beyond our 
poM'er to describe. 

" Several parties, in all about one thousand five hundred men, were 
placed last May under proper officers by the governor, for the purpose of 
securing four criminals guilty of murder, &c. We were in one of these 
parties by whom the criminals were secured ; and this and general good 
conduct procured several persons their liberty, among whom we two were 
so fortunate as to be included. 

'* Morrisset, Murry, and Lafore, are, we think, from Lower Canada. 
" We can speak more decidedly as to our comrades from Prescott, 
Windsor, and the Short Hills, above named, because when we got our 
freedom, we visited most of them, though scattered through the interior 
of the country, following their several trades or occupations. One of us, 
Aaron Dresser, resides in Alexandria, Jefferson county — the other, Ste- 
phen S. Wright, lives in Denmark, Lewis county, both in New-York State. 
We will be happy to reply to any post-paid letters from the relatives of 
our comrades, and to give them any further information in our power. 

« AARON DRESSER, 

« STEPHEN S. WRIGHT." 



THE END. 



APPENDIX 



NOT'E FIRST. 

The cause of the Patriot?' at the battle of Prescott, justified by the Reverend Mar- 
cus Smith, of the Presbyterian Church at Watertowh, in a funeral discourse deliv- 
ered by him, December 9, iS39. The following is a brief extract : 

" But if they went to liberate tlie oppressed, to give to a people crushed by supe» 
rior force, and awed into reluctant submission by military fortresses and a standing 
army, the opportmiity to assert their rights and maintain them — if they had reason 
to believe that a large majority of the people of Canada were partial to a republican 
form of government, sjid were anxious and able to prove their patriotism by an hon- 
orable appeal to arms, then their motives were benevolent and patriotic ; and though 
they might liave been deceived by misrepresentations as to the number of the reform- 
ers, or revolutionists ; though they might have erred on the practicability of the en- 
terprise, I am yet to be convinced that the Spartan band who feE, and who were 
taken at Prescott, deserve the opprobrious epithets of brigands and robbers. 

" These young men were born and nurtured imder a republican government, and 
the only intelligent and stable republican government on earth. They were famihar 
with the history of the Revolution, and the struggles of the patriots of '76, and 
their sympathies had been alternately awalcened by those nations on ,the eastern and 
western continents, who had attempted to achieve their freedom ; and it was a set- 
tled principle of their political faith, that every nation and people had aright tothrovif 
oif' an aristocratical government, assert their mdependence, and assume a government 
more in accordance with justice, humanity, and inalienable rights. Their sympathies 
were republican, and they would have been hypocrites, and unworthy of the inher- 
itance left them by their fathers, if they had not sympathized with those who were 
struggling for independence. Republican patriotism is not a phantom of the brain, 
but a deep principle of the heart. * * * What if they could see that the enter- 
prise and the invasion was a violation of the laws of neutrality, and placed their 
only hope in the prompt redemption of those pledges they had received from the 
Canadians ? yet do these considerations prove that in the sight of God and justice, 
these young men are to be ranked with freebooters and pirates ? Are they to be 
ranked with the blood-thirsty clans of the interior of Asia ? Young men, brought 
up in virtuous and christian families, and among peaceful and intelligent compan- 
ions ; are these men to be associated with the crimsoned assassin, who, to gratify 
his avarice, and to glut his vengeance, destroys his victim and hves on the spoil ? 

" Li my opinion, justice and the page of history will never fix so foul an.imputa- 
tion on this unfortunate band of youth. They have no such motives to confess to 



48 APPENDIX. 

God or 'to man, and whatever character and awards may be assigned them by th6 
laws of nations or the court-martial of Canada, the decision of a Higher Coiiit will 
show that they were influenced by sympathy for the oppressed, and by love to that 
form of government, most equal, just, and approved of God. Some might have 
been influenced by the vain ambition of being the first to plant the .Standard of 
Liberty in Canada ; some might have been influenced by pride, and abhorrence of 
the charge of coAvartUce ; some may have been lured by the prospect and profiers of 
a reward of some of the consecrated glebes of that country, or some of the unoccu- 
pied wilds of tlie north. There are always" visions and accompaniments of every 
enterprise. 



NOTE SECOND. 

William Lyox Mackenzie clears his skirts of this unfortunate expedition in tire 
following words : 

" Of the getting up of this expedition, as we lemarkcd before, we know nothing;. 
Of its failure, those of our citizens who were spectators after the arrival of the expe- 
dition on JMonday, can have but one opinion. There were ample means both in men 
and munitions, and no want of courage or deposition so far as most of the men loerc 
concerned, to have captured Prescott. Indeed, Prescott might have been as easily 
taken as Ogde)isburgh — and every one knows that Ogdcn.sburgh surrendered without 
tiring a gun, and remained in pos.session of the leaders of the expedition and such 
of their men as would not go over to Canada without them, for nearly a Aveek. To 
the want of courage, then, in tiiose who secretly or publicly directed this expedition, 
is the failure to capture Prescott to be attributed. The execution of this project by 
the leaders of the expedition (for it seemed to be Avell-planned) is evidence, if evi- 
dence were wanting, that all efforts of tliis kind must depend for success upon a 
ketler foundalion than any other impulses or motives of action than an open, bold, 
inherent love of liberty for its own sake, and an uncompromising hatred of tyranny 
and oppression." 

Tlie enemies of INIr. Mackenzie wished to attribute all the blame of the failure to 
him. He had nothing to do with the expedition, save the agitating the great cause 
of freedom. It was those who were immediately concerned that the public ought to 
bring to retribution for the ungenerous part they acted in the battle of Prescott. 



NOTE THIRD. 



Of what does Canada complain .' The following extracts will show m what man- 
ner she was as 



" Of what does Canada complain .' — Of absence of secujity for life and property ; 
of taxation without representation ; of the destruction of the liberty of the press ; of 
the suspension of the Tiabeas corpus ; of packed juries ; of a judiciary bribed by, and 
entirely dependent on, the crown ; of the profligate waste of the public revenue 
among swarms of foreign ofiicials ; of the division of the public lands among com- 
panies of foreign stock-jobbers and speculators, to the injury and degradation of in- 



APPENDIX. 49 

dilstrious agricultiuists and emigrants ; of education for the rich and none for the 
poor ; of a dominant court-estabhshed church ; of the banishment, exile, imprison- 
ment, plunder, and wanton murder of Americans and other liberals ; of the annihilation 
of the colonial constitution ; of the abolition of all representative form of g6\ernment, 
and of the erection on the ruins thereof of an arbitrary and vindictive mihtaiy des- 
potism." 

From airs. Jameson's Rambles. 

" I saw, of course, something of the state of feeling on both sides, (says IMrs. 
Jameson in her preface.) but not enough to venture a word on the subject. Upper 
Canada appeared to me loyal in spirit, but resentful and repining under the sense of 
injury, and suffering from the total absence of all sympathy on the part of the Eng- 
li.sh Government with the condition, the wants, the feelings, the capabilities of the 
people and country. I do not mean to say that this want of sympathy notv exists 
to ihe same extent as formerly ; it has been abruptly and painfully awakened, but it 
has too long existed. In climate, in soil, in natural productions of every kind, the 
Upper Province appeared to me superior to the Lower Province, and well calculated 
to become the inexhaustible timber- yard and granary of the Mother Country. The 
n-ant of a sea-port, the want of security of property, the general mismanagement of 
the government lands — these seemed to me the most prominent causes of the physi- 
cal depression of this splendid country, while the poverty and deficient education of 
the people, and a plentiful lack of public spirit in those who were not of the people, 
seemed sufficiently to account for the moral depression everyw^here visible. Add a 
system of mistakes and mal-administration, not chargeable to any one individual, or 
any one measure, but to the Avhole tendency of our colonial government ; the per- 
petual change of officials and change of measurses ; the fluctuation of principles 
destroying all public confidence, and a degree of ignorance relative to the country 
itself, not credible except to those who may have visited it ; and these three things 
together, the want of knowledge, the want of judgment, the want of sympathy, on 
the part of the Government, how can we be surprised at the strangely anomalous 
condition of the governed .' that of a land absolutely teeming with the richest capa- 
bilities, yet poor in population, in wealth, and in energy." 



NOTE FOURTH. 



Th£ following letters are taken from " Mackenzie's Gazette," of November 24, 
1838, regarding the affair of the Windmill. 

" Ogdensburgh, Friday, Is'ov. IT. 
" Dear Sir 

" I hasten to give you the latest news, although such as I have to relate, at pres- 
ent, is indeed ymelancholy. The Patriots have, until to-day, fairly held their own ; 
but this day at noon, the Cobourg and five other steamboats, brought down eight 
hundred British regular troops, and some of the heaviest cannon in the province. 
These, added to one thousand militia, were too much for the Patriots. They were 
surrounded by land, and the steamboats kept up a murderous fire from the rivei'. 
The Patriots fought nobly, but it was of no use ; they were driven back and scat- 
tered. At sunset they held out a flag of truce, which, though displayed three times, 

4 



50 APPENDIX. 

the British did not regard; they had orders to 'GIVE NO QUARTERS, AND 
TAKE NO PRISONERS ! ' At this time, two of the houses occupied by the 
Patriots are burning, and the British regulars are around the windmill, looking on, 
but not molested. There is no firing now on either side. 

" From all appearances, the Patriots are totally routed and annihilated ! It is 
barely possible that a very few may have escaped, but probably not one will live to 
tell the tale. 

" The excitement here is tremendous ; the utmost indignation prevails against the 
Patriot officers and leaders. It is a solemn truth, that there was but one general 

officer in the action ! Had it not been for such cowardly scoundrels as AV 

J , B , P , N , and sevieral more such, this result would not have 

taken place. Their livies are ahncst threatened by several of our most respectable 
citizens, and they may suffer yet for sending umocent and brave men where they 
dare not go iliemselves ! 

" The battle was most splendid — about two thousand fighting at a time ; the num- 
ber of killed and wounded in this engagement cannot fall much short of five hun- 
dred. You may imagine Iww true and faithful the Patriots at the windmill fought, 

when I tell you that P K and a few more went to them last night, at the 

hazard of thieir lives, to take thein off their position, but thiey refused to leave, 
saying that they were confident their friends would not desert them, and that there 

were thousands of men in county, bound by their oaths to assist them, and 

that they would abide the issue. And now they are all, or nearly all, murdered ! ■ 
" Respectfully, &c. 

"J. M. DOTY 

" 4 o'clock, P. JI. 

" Mr. Jonah Woodruff has this moment arrived from Ogdensburgh, which place 
he left at noon, yesterday. He saw one man — a Pole — who escaped, and who sup- 
posed himself to be the only one left alive. The Patriots rushed out of the mill, at, 
or soon after sunset, with three white flags, but they were all speared as they went 
out. The mill was then filled with British troops, and the Pole — who escaped — 
with two others, who had secreted themselves in the lower pai't of the mill, mingled 
with the British troops, but his two companions were killed ; he himself escaped by 
wearing the coat of Lieutenant Johnson, who was killed on Tuesday. 

"The Patriot force in the mill numbered one hundred and eleven men, besides 
eleven woimded. 

" It is supposed that Colonel Von Schoultz, a Pole, who commanded the Patriot 
force, killed himself." 

"OoDBNSBUROH, Friday, Nov. 16. 

" Dear Sir : 

" I hasten to give you the latest news, which is'indeed melancholy. The Patriots 
have until to-day, fairly held their own ; but to-day at noon, the Cobourg and five 
other boats, brought down eight hundred British regular troops, and some of the 
heaviest cannon in the province. These, added to one thousand militia, were too 
much for the Patriots. They were sui'rounded by land, and the steamboats kept up 
a murderous fire from the river. The Patriots fought nobly, but it was of no use ; 
they were driven back and scattered. 

At sunset they held out a flag of truce, which, though displayed three times, the 
British did not regard; they had orders to « GIVE NO QUARTER, AND TAKE NO 
PRISONERS !" At this time two of the houses occupied by the Patiots are bum- 



APPENDIX. 61 

ing, and the British regulai's are around the windmill, looking on, but not molested. 
There is no firing now on eitlier side. 

" From all appearances the Patriots are totally routed and annihilated. It is barely 
possible that a very few may have escaped, but probably not one will live to tell the 
kle. 

« The battle was most splendid— about 2000 fighting at a time ; the number of killed 
and wounded in this engagement cannot fall much short of 500. You may imagine 
how true and faithful the Patriots at the windmill fought, when I tell you that 

P . K and a few more went to them last night, at the hazard of their 

lives, to take them off their position, but they refused to leave, saying that they were 
confident their friends would not desert them, that there were thousands of men in 

comity, bomid by their oaths to assist them, and that they would abide 

the issue. And now they are all, or nearly all, murdered ! 

" Respectfully yours, 

"J. M. DOTY" 



" 4 o'clock, P. M. 

" Mr. Jonah Woodruff has this moment arrived from Ogdensburgh, which place 
he left at noon yesterday. He saw one man, a Pole, who escaped, and who sup- 
posed himself to be the only one left aUve. The Patriots rushed out of the mill, 
at, or soon after sunset, with three white flags, but they were all speared as they went 
out. 

" The mill was then filled with British troops, and the Pole— who escaped — with 
two others who had secreted themselves in the lower part of the mill, mingled with 
the British troops, but his two companions were killed ; he himself escaped by wear- 
ing the coat of Lieutenant Johnson, who was killed on Tuesday. The Patriot force 
in the mill numbered 111 men, besides 1 1 wovuided. Col. Woodruff, of Salina, is said 
to be among the number killed. 



ROYALIST ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF THE 16th INST. 

Yesterday evening, the following dispatch from the Hon. Lieut. Dmidas of the 
83rd. Regiment, was received at Head Quarters, Montreal. We trust that the Ameri- 
can brigands have only escaped the bullet and bayonet, to terminate their career on 
the scaffold. — [Herald. 

Prescott, Nov. 16, 1838. 

" Sir: 

"I have the honor to acquaint you, for the information of His ExceUehcy the Com- 
mander of the Forces, that I came down here yesterday from Kingston vrith four 
companies of the 83rd Regiment, two 18 poimders, and a howitzer, and made up from 
the town to a position about four hundred yards from the windmill, and adjoin- 
ing houses occupied by the brigands. They did not move or come out of the houses 
to oppose mjr advance. The 18 pounders opened with good effect upon the stone 
building near the mill. Capt. Sandon, with two gimboats, in which he canied two 
18 pounders, took up a position below the wuidmill, which he commanded, but not 
with much effect. After cannonading these buildings for an hour, or rather more, 
and observing the brigands to be quitting them and endeavoring to escape, I ordered 
4* 



5a APPENDIX. 

the troops to advance ; very little resistance was offered by the party occupying the 
windmill, but a small fire was opposed to us from the adjoining stone building. 

" It being dark before the troops got round these buildings, and the brigands in the 
windmill having displayed a white flag, they were summoned to surrender them- 
selves unconditionally, which they did. Eighty-six prisoners were immediately 
secured, and sixteen others, who were wounded, were removed from the mill as soon 
as convenience could be found ; a large supply of arms, twenty-six kegs of powdef, 
and three pieces of ordnance fell into oiu- hands. 

" Some of Ihe brigands effected their escape from the buildings when darkness came 
on, and hid themselves in the brushwood on the bank under the mill. I directed the 
militia to scour this bank, and several prisoners Avere secured, among others a Pole, 
calling himself Gen. Von Schoultz, who, it is understood, was the principal leader. 
All buildings adjoining the mill we destroyed, but the latter I directed to be occupied 
by a company of militia, and propose that it should be so, or entirely demoUshed. 

" I am happy to say the service was performed with the loss of one man only of 
the 8 3rd Regiment. 

" Your most obedient servant, 

"H. DUNDAS, 
" Lieut. Col. 83rd Reg't Commandant. 
Capt. Coldie, A. D. C, Montreal." 



NOTE FIFTH. 

For the following notices and letters, the author is indebted to the " Onondaga 
Standard," "Oswego Bulletin," and " Mackenzie's Gazette." 

COLONEL VON SCHOULTZ'S LETTER. 

"Fort Henry, Dec. 1, 1838. 
"Dear Sir: 

" I take the liberty to address you some few lines, begging you to make publicly 
known the kind and civil treatment we have experienced from the officers and men 
belonging to the eighty-third Regiment, so that if any member of that corps should 
travel in the United State.?, our friends there may show them our gratitude. We 
may fairly say that we owe our lives to them, because, had they not protected us 
after wq. surrendered, the mililia would surely liave killed the greater number of us. 
The sheriff, in whose keeping we are, has treated us most kindly, and done every- 
thing in his power to better the situation in which we were tlirown by the miserable 
cowardice of General Birge, Bill Johnston, and their officers. If our prayers were 
heard, those base rascals would have been delivered over to the British Government 
by our own ; and we would then meet our own fate with perfect resignation. 

" When, on Monday night, the general did not come over or send us any reenforce- 
ment, and when none of the inhabitants or regulars did join us, the men, about one 
hundred and seventy in number, begged me to take the command, and lead them 
back to the LTnited States. We had then not a single boat for use, and the British 
steamer Experiment, kept up a vigilant look-out on the river. We defended our- 
selves for some time against a superior enemy, dxuing which time, I was confident 
boats would be sent from the American shore to bur assistance. None were pro- 



APPENDIX. 53 

cured, howevev, by the cowards. Tuesday morning we were attacked by land and 
water, at about seven o'clock; the firing ceased at three o'clock in the afternoon, 
when the British withdrew and left us in our position. We had about thirty killed 
and w^ounded. I had, during the night, sent a man across the river on a plank, 
for boats. Tuesday evening, the general's adjutant came over, telling me a schooner 
Avould be over to take us away. We carried our wounded down on the bank, and 
waited with anxiety for the arrival of the vessel, but none arrived. Wednesday 
passed away, and the British began to surround us with considerable forces, haras- 
sing our flanks continually. I think, Thursday night a steamer from the American 
shore approached us, and we were informed by a couple of men sent ashore, that it 
was to take us away. We again carried out our wounded, but some few rifle shots 
from the British frightened the cowards away, and we were again left to ourselves. 

" Friday, at about mid-day, a parley came from the British, for the purpose 
of taking away the killed that remained on the field, and I delivered over to him the 
British wounded I had taken up, as I had no medical stores of any kind, and it 
would have been a base and unmanly policy to augment the sufferings of the 
wounded enemy. One horn's cessation of hostilities was granted for burying our 
dead, but having no sirovels, we could not do it — when the time was out, the British 
steamers came down with heavy artillery, and the battle began. As I could get no 
one to take the defence of the house on our left flank, 1 went there myself with ten 
men. As I had suspected, that hou.se was most strenuously attacked. From the 
situation of the house, I was not able to see how it went on in the other houses and 
the mill. We must have been surrounded by at least two thousand men, and a de- 
tachment of the eighty-third Regiment. My whole number of men, when this last 
battle began, was one hundred and eight. 

" I kept my position, though the roof crumbled to pieces over our heads, by the 
British fire from their artillery, ruitil dark, when I was informed that all had surren- 
dered : I also then surrendered. I was stripped to the shirt sleeves by the militia, in 
the first moment of anger and fury. Even my bonnet was taken away. I lost my 
watch, trunk, money, and the clothing I had on. 

" We are tried by court-martial ! I have had my trial — am prepared for death. 

" Yours tmly, 

" S. YON SCHOULTZ. 
'•J. R. Parker, Esq., Oswego." 



From the Oswego Bulletin. 

THE MEMORY OP VON SCHOULTZ. 

From a company of heroes, whose deeds shall hereafter furnish rich theme for 
" sweet lyre," I select one, whose name even now makes burn with fiercer fires the 
youthful blood ; and age, when heedful of his virtue, mourns his early loss, and 
claims for him revenge. It is the name of Von Schoultz— a Pohsh patriot— driven 
by the oppressor's rod from his native land, he sought and found an asylum here 
The story of Canadian wrongs early found in him a sympathizmg hstener. In fancy, 
he again saw Poland writhing under the despot's heel, and a stranger in a strange 
land, he opened his bosom to the complaints of the oppressed. " Where liberty 
dwelt there was hia country." For her had he crossed the Atlantic wave, and stand- 



9i'. APPENDIX 

ing on our shores, did her far-off voice of sorrow pierce the intervening gloom; and 
he determined yet once more to strike for her a blow, and give the houseless wan-' 
derer a home. 

He has fallen — but not amid the stem conflict of the heady fight his genius had 
directed and his commanding valor sustained. He is gone — but not from the hard 
fought field of his glory did his immortal spirit take its flight. No — amid the exe- 
crations of maudlin bmtality, and the fiend huzzas of a rabble rout, was that noble 
man conducted as a felon to the gallows ; and there alone, with enemies, though all 
unconquered still, did lie submit in death to British mercy ! .' 

" Kingston Ja.il, 7th December, 1838. 
" When you get this letter I am no more. I have been informed that my execution 
will talce place to-morrow. May God forgive them who brought me to this untimely 
death. I have made up my mind, and I forgive them. To-day I have been promised 
a lawyer, to draw up my -will. I have appointed you my executor of said will. 1 
wrote to you in my fonmer letter about my body. If the British government permit 
it, I wish it may be delivered to you to be buried on your farm. I have no time to 
write Ions; to you, because I have great need of communicating with my Creator, and 
preparing far his presence. The time has been very short that has been allowed. My 
last wish to the Americans is, that they may not think of avenging my death. Let 
no further blood be shed ; and believe me, from what 1 have seen, that all the stories 
that were told about the sufferings of the Canadian people, were untrue. Give my 
love to your sister, and tell her I think on her as on my mother. God reward her 
for all her kindness. I further beg you to take care of W. Johnston, so that he may 
find an honorahle bread. Farewell, my dear friend ! God bless and protect you. 
(Signed.) 

"S. VON SCHOULTZ. 
"To Warren Green, Esq., Salina, State of New-York, United States.'" 



From the Franklin Gazette. 



COLONEL VON SCHOULTZ. 

Attempts have recently been made by the Tories of Canada, and their friends and 
coadjutors in the States, to produce the impression that this lamented martjT: of lib- 
erty was a Russian emissary, sent to this country by the Emperor Nicholas to aid 
the rebelion in Canada. To rescue the name of Von Schoultz from the disgrace and 
infamy which such a charge, if established, would bring upon it, we copy the fol- 
lowing extract from a letter to the editor of the Syracuse Standard. 

NiLEs GusTAF ScHOBTEwisKii VoN ScHouLTZ was of Swedish descent, a Pole 
by birth, and of noble extraction. He had just finished an education, which versed 
him deeply in the Sciences, both useful and ornamental, and had acquired the highest 
literai-y honors of the principal and most celebrated Universities of Northern Europe, 
when he found himself engaged in that sanguinary and unequal contest between 
Poland and Russia, the unhappy termination of which lost to himself a country, and 
to that rmfortunate country everything but a name. As he was ever extremely 
modest in his pretensions, I have seldom heard him revert to personal achievements 
incidental to events so memorable, and then only imder circumstances of the highest 
excitement. But I have learnt from these occasional departures from self-reserve. 



APPENDIX. 55 

and incontestibly from other soiirces, that the important part he enacted was bril. 
liant with heoric adventures and hair-bi-eadth escapes, the bare recital of which is cal- 
culated to enchain and captivate the most casual listener. Certain it is, he signalized 
himself amid a host of heroes, for his rise was sudden, from the comparative obscu- 
rity of the scholar to the very responsible command of a colonel. 

«' In that sanguinary and decisive struggle before the walls of Warsaw, his father 
and a brother fell martyrs to the sacred cause of liberty. His mother and a sister 
fled in the disguise of peasants, but were taken and banished to Russia, and are now 
confined to a space of ten miles square of that Empire. Himself gashed and scarred 
with wounds, but covered with imperishable glory — a fugitive wandering from coim- 
try to country — friends and fortune lost, despoiled of home and kindred, with a con- 
stitution much impared, he finally effected a landing on our shores, commonly 
denominated " the home of the brave and the land of the free." He evidently has 
been a traveller, as is to be inferred from his own declarations, as well as from rich 
stores of information he has acquired from actual observation. Sweden, Denmai'k, 
Finland, Lapland, Norway, Germany, Holland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, 
Spain, Portugal, England, and finally America have been the theatre of his travels, and 
he had not only acquired a general geographical knowledge of them all but an inti- 
mate acquaintance with the habits, manners and customs of their inhabitants. I have 
heard him dwell long and eloquently on these, to me, novel and interesting topics — of 
Polar snows, and Italian skies, and of burning African suns— he had served beneath 
the scorching rays of the latter, and dwelt under the benign influence of the fonner — 
of Florence, its statuary, its picture galleries, and above aU, of the urbanity and hos- 
pitality of its inhabitants, he was ecstatic in praise. He spoke eight different dialects, 
but, at the time of his arrival here, he had only an imperfect knowledge of our own. 
His contiguity to, and his father's interest in the celebrated mines of Cracow, led him 
to an intimate knowledge of the manufacture of our principal and staple article, salt. 
Thrown upon his own resourses, in a land of strangers, divested of every vestige of 
property, but a few valuable family relics, he cast about him with his usual energy 
for the means of a livelihood, and these considei-ations brought him to the Onondaga 
salines in the fall of 1836. Here he fitted up a small laboratory — made his experi- 
ments — became confirmed in the truth of his own theory, and succeeded in convin- 
cing, at least one individual, of the practicability and utihty of his improvement. In 
short he proceeded to Washington — obtained Letters Patent — visited and cinalyzed the 
principal springs in Virginia — made the most favorable impressions wherever he 
extended his business or acquaintance, and fmally returned here according to prom- 
ise, and put two of our furnaces in operation on his plan successfuUij. While here, 
he Ustened to the current report of Patriot suffering, of the oppressors and the 
oppressed, of a vast population, seven-tenths of which waited the coming of the libe- 
rators with open and extended arms. His sympathizing soul was fired at the thought 
of again being permitted to strike for freedom — his enthusiastic recklessness of dan- 
ger led him into its very vortex, and he has perished — ignominiously perished. 

" On a review of the sparkling incidents of his brief and romantic career, I still think** 
on him as the creature of a high wrought fancy rather than of sober reahty — like a 
meteor of uncommon brilliancy, which has suddenly illmnined the path of my dull 
existence, and as suddenly disappeared for ever. 

« WARREN GREEN. 

" Salina, December 28, 1838." 

The Onondaga Standard contains the following sketch of the life of Colonel Von 
Pchoultz. 
" He is a Polish refugee of a noble family, having commanded a regiment in fhe 



56 APPENDIX. 

Polish revolution. His father was a general in the Polish army, and fell in the 
sanguinary contest under the walls of Warsaw. The son was made a prisoner, but 
with seventeen of his companions in arms, made his escape from the Ptussiaii 
Guards, and reached this couiitry. The two other Poles, named as prisoners at 
Kingston, belonged to his regiment in his native country. Von Schoultz has resided 
in tliis town, a part of the time, for three j-ears. He discovered a method of refining 
the brine of the Salt Springs of some of its impurities, which was deemed valuable 
upon tlie Canhawa river, though not employed to any great extent here. He once 
sold his patent for one hundred thousand dollars, though we know not how much 
he ever realized from the sale. 

" Von Schoultz is esteemed by those who know him, as a gentleman, a man of 
science, a brave soldier, and a true patriot. He engaged in this expedition, because 
he was told that it ivas in the cause of liberty. Some incidents are related by those 
who have witnessed his conduct at the windmill and at Prescott, which prove him 
to have been a good engineer, a skilful commander, and a man of the most fearless 
intrepidity. Had he fallen in battle, we might have regretted his fate, without im- 
pufjning its justice ; but it would be a leproach to the very name of Englishman, 
through all succeeding time, if this chivalrous champion of freedom should be made 
to expiate his errors— if errors they be— upon a scatfold." 



NOTE SIXTH. 



For the following documents, the author is indebted to the kindness of G. M. 
Bucklin, of Carthage, Jeflferson county. 

MR. ABBEY TO HTS SON. 

"Fort Henry, Tuesday night, Dec. 11, 1838. 

" Arm yourself my dear boy with fortitude, to hear the sad intelhgence, that ere 
these lines meet your eye, I am numbered -with the dead. My zeal in the cause of 
miiversal freedom has eventually cost me my life. But let it be remembered, that 
the unfortunate expedition I was engaged in, took a direction contrary to my views ; 
but in this affair you can taKe no interest at present, or at any other time further 
than my reputation is concerned ; time will develope facts, when my conduct and 
intentions will be known and appreciated. 

" When our condition became liopeless, I could have taken opportunity to have 
made my escape across the line, but I could not bear the thoughts of deserting those 
brave, and many of them, worthy and amiable young men to destruction ; life, thus 
preserved, would not be worth ])ossessing. 

"In relation to my pecuniary affairs, you must be frequently with and advise with 
my friends' counsel, and also with Mr. Wiley, and if it should be necessary to sell 
any of my real estate, let the village property be sold if possible. 

" As regards yourself, cultivate your mind, associate with honorable men, aim high 
and let aU your motives be of an exalted character; and now, my beloved son, I bid 

vou adieu for ever, 

^ "DORREPHUS ABBEY.'* 



APPENDIX. 57 

TO HIS DAUGHTERS. 

"December 11, 1838. 
" My dear Daughters : 

" Many severe trials have awaited you from your earliest childhood, but that w^hich 
3-0U have now to endure, will require all your firmness ; you are now left vrithout 
a parent. To-morroiv morning closes my earthly scenes. You have to bear up 
under the most tiemendous ordeal that the mind of female sensibihty ever endm-ed. 
But I have, the consolation to believe, that your fortitude is equal to every contin- 
gency and '^ent of human life ; without the exercise of such sentiments, existence 
would scarcely be a blessing. I leave you now orphans under the protection, I 
trust, of my relations and personal friends. I particularly commend you to a great 
friend of your mother, Mrs. Woodruff. Mr. Wiley will no doubt take much inte- 
rest in your welfare. I write from a gloomy cell, lying upon a bed of straw ; the 
guai-d will soon call for'the light, and I must close. Since my sentence, I could not 
procure materials for writing, till this late hour of my existence, which have ju.st 
been furnished me by an officer of the garrison, by direction of the sheriff. Present 
me kmdly to kindred and friends. I cannot discriminate : so farev^ell, my deai' 
children. Your affectionate father, 

"DORREPHUS ABBEY. 

" To Amelia Augusta and Arabella Abbey. 

"I slept soundly and quietly last night; I now feel as though I could meet the event 
v/ith composure. The guard has not yet called. " D. A." 



"Fort Henry, November 28, 1833. 
" My dear son : 

" I this moment received your letter by the hands of the sheriff. I am in want of 
nothing but what my friends at Wateftown have already provided, Teil your dear 
sisters that one or both of them had better go to Oswego. As for yoiuself, take good 
counsel. ************ 

"Whatever may be my fate, you muat exercise firmness and resignation commen- 
surate to the trial ; we must sooner or later pait; it is of no great moment when and 
in what manner I take my exit. If my hfe is sacrificed, I have the approbation of 
an approving conscience, having been governed by integrit}' of purpose. Great de- 
lusion has, however, been entertained in relation to public opinion in Canada. They 
are not prepared for republican institutions. All governments should conform to the 
genius of the people. 

" Your affectionatefather, 

« DORREPHUS ABBEY." 



From Mackenzie's Journal of 1828. 

December 12, 1838.— Dobrephus Abbey and Daniel George, of Watertown, 
New- York, hung at Kingston for defending American freedom. Captain Abbey left 
two orphan children ; was a native of Connecticut, a printer by profession. Mr. 
Southwick says he employed him in his office, that he was an excellent workman, 
sober and correct in his habits, became an editor of a journal in this State, was fru- 
gal and industrious, enjoying the respect of society- ; brave, sincere, and a republican 
frpm principle. He died on the same scaffold as Von Schoultz, a raartj'r to the cause 



58 APPfiNtJlX. 

of '76. His blood cries for vengeance ! ! ! It is said that Mrs. George was refused 
a sight of her husband, till he was dead. 



NOTE SEVENTH 



December 10, 1838. Execution of Colonel Martin Woodruff, at Kingston 
He was a deputy sheriff, Salina, Onondaga coimty, New-York. His enthusiasm in 
favor of tlie Canadians was boundless — he came to Navy Island, with aid to the 
Patriots — was ready to seiTe at French Cieek had there been a commander, and ex- 
hibited great coolness and courage at the windmill. A lew mihtia officers were 
collected, who ordered Irim to execution. The Kingston Spectator thus describes the 
scene of his murder, of which Victoria aud her bloody cabinet heartily approved. 
" This gallant soldier was, about simrise, brought from Fort Henry upon a rough 
carter's train or sleigh, attended by tvvo priests, escorted by a party of volimteer cav- 
alry, to the jail, and soon after to the door leading to the scaffold, when the sheriff 
read Arthur's warrant to execute him ; he was then placed on the platform, the cap 
pulled over his face, and the hangman fastened the rope to a hook in the beam over 
head. The platform fell and presented a revolting, di.'^ustihg, and disgraceful scene. 
The knot, instead of drawmg tight under his ear, was brought to the chin ; it did 
not slip, but left space enough to put, a hand "wathin ; the chief weight of the body 
bearing upon the rope at the back of -the neck The body was in great agitation, 
and seemed to suffer greatly. The spectators said it was shameful management ; 
when two hangmen came out, endeavored to strangle the sufferer, aild not having 
succeeded, they returned again to their disgusting work." The Port Ontario Aurora 
says: " his neck was not broken till the liangman on the cross-tree had pulled him 
up by the collar and let him fall four times in succession. After this, the inhuman 
brute struck his heels several times into the breast of the dying man ! Shame on the 
civilized barbarians ! No wonder the biped blood-hounds are hunted by the aveng- 
ing assassin." 



NOtE EIGHTH 



The following extracts show how much honor Sir Allan MacNab and Captain 
Drew deserve from Americans. 

" The steamboat Caroline took out a license at Buffalo r.,- o teiiyboat for passen- 
gers—sailed to Tonawanda— tlience to Schlosser, and twice between it and Navy 
Island — Schlosser contains an old store-house and a small inn. At five o'clock in 
the evening, the Caroline was moored at the wharf— the tavern being very full, a 
number of the gentlemen took beds in the boat — in all, about thirty-three persons 
slept there. A watch was placed on deck at eight o'clock, the watchmen unarmed 
— there was only one pocket-pistol on board, and no powder; at midnight, the 
Carohne was attacked by five boats, fuU of armed men, from the English aimy at 
Chippewa, who killed (as themselves say) six jnefl, or as the American account h^a , 



APPENDIX. 



59 



it, eleven. A number were severely wounded, as the people in the American port, 
could make no resistance. To kill them was, therefore, a wanton assassinatiouu. 
The cry of the assailants was, ' G — d d — n them — no quarter — fire ! fire ! ' Amos 
Durfee, of Bxiffalo, was found dead upon the dock, a musket-ball having passed 
through his head. The Caroline sailed under the American flag, which the assail- 
ants took to Toronto, and displayed at annual festivals, in honor of this outrage. 
She was set in a blaze, cut adrift and sent over the Falls of Niagara. We witnessed 
the dreadful scene from Navy Island. The thrilling cry ran around that there were 
living souls on board ; and as the vessel, wrapt in vivid flame, which disclosed her 
doom as it shone brightly on the water, was hurrying down the resistless rapids to 
the tremendous cataract, the thmider of which, more awfully distinct in the midnight 
stillness, horrified every mind with the presence of their ine\'itable fate ; niunbers 
caught, in fancy, the wails of dying wretches, hopelessly perishing by the double 
horrors of a fate v/hich nothing could avert ; and watched with agonized attention 
the flaming mass, till it was hurried over the Falls to be crushed in everlasting dark- 
ness in the unfathomed tomb of waters below. Several Canadians who left the 
Island in the Caroline that evening, to return next day, have not since been heard 
of, and doubtless were among the murdered, or hid on boai-d, and perished with the 
ill-fated vessel. Why did the EngHsh pass Navy Island, in Canada, where the 
Patriots had hoisted their flag, and waited for them, and attack an unarmed boat in 
New- York State, in the dead of night, and butcher them in cold-blood ! Sir Francis 
Head plamred, ordered, and sanctioned the whole massacre ; the Queen of England, 
and her government, approved of it and rewarded the villains. Drew is raised to 
the rank of Captain of the Royal Navy, and commands on Lake Erie ; and McNab 
is knighted, and received the Royal thanks. 5c|= Sir John Colborne is also created 
Lord Seaton ! =C)0 

" McNab, in his dispatches, says : ' I was informed by citizens from Buffalo, that 
the Caroline would be down that night.' The editor of the Star stated that he un- 
derstood that Doctor Thomas M. Foote, of the Commercial, and John McLean, ex- 
judge of Seneca county, were that night McNab's guests in his camp. Was it so ? 
The honorable John Elmsley, Toronto, a member of Head's Government, attended 
the anniversary dinner there, in honor of the heroes who defeated the Yankees. 
He said : ' After a desperate engagement of some minutes, she was fired, and rode 
upon the waters a blazing beacon of infamy until she sunk into the abyss beneath,' 
(loud cheers.) ' Gentlemen, I glory in having been one of those who destroyed this 
boat.' On the same night, (29th December, '38,) says the Montreal Herald, ' Colonel 
Holmes and the officers of liis brigade, held their first regimental mess-diimer at Orr's 
hotel. The room was decorated with transparencies of her majesty, the Duke of 
Wellington, Brittania, the steamer Caroline in flames, descending the Falls of 
Niagara, and a globe, with the motto, ' The British empire, on which the sun never 
sets.' " 



NOTE NINTH. 

This extract shows that the Windsor prisoners had about as hard fate as our- 
selves—another evidence of ferocity of English tyrants : 

December 4, 1838. Battle of Windsor. — The refugees and their friends, one 
hundred and sixty-four strong, with arms for themselves only, borrow a steamboat' 



60 APPENDIX. 

and cross from Detroit to Windsor, U. C. ; their watchword " Remember Prescott !'^ 
they attack the barracks, carry and burn them ; hum a British steamboat ; take 
twenty-five prisoners, touch no private property ; are attacked by Colonel Prince, 
the militia, and a party of regulars from Sandwach ; a division only of their parly 
engaged in the defence, and fight nobly; Colonel Putnam, a Canadian, nephew of 
the celebrated General Putnam of the American Revolution, is killed ; also Majot' 
Harvell, a gallant Kentuckyan, and Captain Lewis; the patrols retreat ; some of them 
taken by Prince, an English attorney from Cheltenham; he murders four of his 
prisoners, without trial, several hours after the engagement. His letters to Airey 
said that " of the brigands and pirates twenty-one were killed, besides four who were 
brought in just at the close and immediately after the engagement, all qfu^hom I 
m-dercd to be shot upon the spot, and which loas done accordingly.''^ Putnam was an 
Amftrican bom, forty-five years of age, and left a Avidow and eight children in Canada. 
His wife is the niece of General Herkimer He wrapt the tri-colored flag round his 
nlangled body, lay doAvn, and expired. 

Before leaving the field. Adjutant Cheesman, of the 2nd Essex, brought up a pris- 
oner whom he had taken. He surrendered him to Colonel Prince, who ordered him 
to be immediately shot on the spot, and it was done. The man was first shot in the 
shoulder, and severely though not mortally wounded ; a second shot carried away 
pa]t of his cheek ; a third wounded him in the neck, after which he was ba3'oneted 
to death ! The second prisoner (who was wounded,) was brought into the Xova\ of 
Sandwich, at least txvo liours after the engagement, and was ordered to be shot on the 
spot. It was proposed to give him •' a run for his life.''' This barbarous proposi- 
tion was acceded to, and in an instant a dozen muskets were levelled for his execu- 
tion. At this moment Colonel William Elliott exclaimed, ' D — n you, you coioardly 
rascals, are you going to murder your prisoner V^ This exclamation for one instant 
retarded the fire of the party, but in the next the prisoner was brought to the ground; 
he sprang again to his feet and ran round the corner of the fence, Avhere he was met 
and shot through the head. His name was Bennett, late a resident in the London 
District. His death took place in our most public street, and in the presence of sev- 
eral ladies and children. Another prisoner named Dennison, also wo\mded and 
unarmed, taken after the action, was brought in during the morning. Charles Elliot, 
Esq., who was present when Colonel Prince ordered this man to be shot, entreated 
that he might be reserved to be dealt with according to the laws of the country ; but 
Colonel Prince's reply was, " D — n the rascal, shoot him .'" and it was done ! ! 
When Colonel Prince reached Windsor, he was informed that Stephen Miller, one 
of the' Patriots, was lying wounded at the house of Mr. William Johnston. The 
man, whose leg had been shattered by a musket-ball, had been found by Francois 
Baby, Esq. Colonel Prince gave the orders for his execution, and he was dragged 
out (f the house and shot. The wounded man said he was thii-ty-five years old, 
owned a farm in the town of Florence, Huron county. State of Ohio, and he had a 
wife, and a boy about twelve years old ; he talked about his wife and son, and 
wished that his wife might be written to. Soon after this a party of militia-men 
dragged him out of the house, and shot him. Miller was wounded between seven 
and eight in the morning, and was shot at noon : the action was over about eight 
o'clock. Miller lay zmburied all night in the street, and was completely disembow- 
elled^ and other parts of him eaten by the hogs ! Captain Broderick, of the regulars, 
left a prisoner in charge of a dragoon. Prince fell in with this prisoner, ordered 
him to be taken from his guard and shot, which was done .' A party of Indians 
who were sent into the woods, took seven prisoners. When they brought them out 
a cry was raised, " bayonet them .'" but Martin, one of the Indian braves, replied. 



APPENDIX. (jl 

" No, we are Christians ! we will not murder them .'" But when these men were 
delivered to Colonel Prince, he had them placed in a wagon, and when it reached 
an open spot opposite the barracks, he commanded tliem to be taken out and shot ! 
On this, Mr. James cried, •' For God's sake, do not let a white man murder those 
whom an Indian spared !" 



These affidavits exhibit the truth of the above statements concerning the atrocities 
of Windsor 

Upper Canada, 1 The deposition of William Johnson, of Windsor, township 
Western District, > of Sandwich, said District, common school teacher, taken on 
To wit: ) oath before us, Robert Mercer, Esq., and James Dougall, 

Esq., two of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace of said District, this 22nd of Janu- 
ary, 1839 

This deponent saith, that, on the fourth of December, 1838, the day of the battle 
of Windsor, after the action, between seven and eight o'clock, he saw a man lying 
wounded in the orchard of Francis Baby, Esq., of Windsor. The wounded man 
Avas afterward carried and laid do-v\Ti in this deponent's house, by order of the said 
Francis Baby. The man was shot through the leg immediately below the knee ; it 
was a wretched looking wound, and bled very much. Some person dressed the 
. wound and bandaged it to stop the bleeding, which operation this deponent witnessed. 
This deponent also felt the man's leg, which was shattered, and he could distinctly 
hear the bones crack. While the man was lying in deponent's house, a person came 
in and told him that he would be shot, that he had not an hour to Hve, and that he 
had better say his prayers. The wounded man then informed this deponent that his 
name was Stephen Miller, that he was thirty-five years old, that he owned a farm in 
the town of Florence, Huron County, State of Ohio, and that he had a wife and a 
boy about twelve years old ; he talked about his wife and son, and requested de- 
ponent to write to his wife, directing as above, near Birmingham post-office. The 
said JMiiler also entreated deponent to see Francis Baby, and prevail upon that gen- 
tleman to intercede for his life for two or three days, to enable him to see his wife ; 
this deponent accordingly went in search of Mr. Baby but could not find him. 

This deponent further states, that a party of militia-men afterv-rard came and drag- 
ged the said woimded Miller out of deponent's house, and shot him in the open 
space fronting the street, about twelve feet from the door of deponent's house. The 
said Sliller was wounded between seven and eight o'clock on the morning of the 
action aforesaid, and was shot about twelve o'cloek, noon : the said action was over 
about eight o'clock. The said Miller lay unburied all night in the street and was 
completely dise?nbowelled, and other parts of him eaten by the hogs ! ! 

WILLIAM JOHNSON. 



Western District, ' ) The deposition of John Gowan, of the town of Sandwich, 
To tvit : ] in said District, gentleman, taken on oath &c., &c. 

This deponent has read the foregoing affidavit of William Johnson, respecting the 
shooting of the prisoner Stephen Miller, taken and wounded at the action of Wind- 
sor, the fourth of December, 1838, that this deponent was near Colonel Prince who 
commanded our militia on that day, when the report was brought to Colonel Prince 
that the said Miller was lying wounded in the house of the said Johnson ; this de- 
ponent heard Colonel Prime give the order to shoot the said prisoner, Stephen Miller, 
which was done accordingly. 



02 APPENDIX. 

This deponent further states, that he saw on the following day the remains of 
said Miller, lying in the street disembowelled, and shockingly mutilated by the hogs. 

JOHN COWAN. 

Western District, I I, Charles E. Anderson, of Sandwich, gentleman, do here- 
To wit : ) by swear that I have read the foregoing affidavit of Wil- 

liam Johnson, of Windsor, said District, respectmg the shooting of Stephen Miller, a 
wounded prisoner at Windsor, and / do swear that Colonel Prince did give the order 
to shoot the said Stephen Miller, which was done accordingly. It was I who reported 
the circumstance to Colonel Prince, and stated to him at the same time that the said 
JVIilier was wounded. 

CHARLES E. ANDERSON. 



NOTE TENTH. 



January 4, 1839. — This moaning, Christopher Buckley, of Ononds^a county; 
Sylvester A. Lawton, of Hoimsfield, Jeiferson county'; Russell Phelps, of Water- 
town ; aad Duncan Anderslon, of Paraelia, New-York, Prescott prisoners, gallant 
and generous men, were escorted by the hireling soldiers of EjT!;land from Fort 
Henry to the front of the Court House, Kingston, Upper Canada, and butchered in 
cold-blood, in the midst of the Canada snows. They were hung two at a time. 
Colonel Dundas and his officers enjoying the scene, in the evening, there was a 
ball and great rejoicings. These men had no trial, according to the laws of Canada. 
Arthur selected some twelve or lifteen of his creatures, militia officers, bade them 
ti-y, and sentence the Americans, and they did so, without judge or jury. When 
will these homd murders be avenged ? 

The following is the sentence that was passed upon them : 

" That you and each of you ie taken to tire, jail from whence you came, and that 
on the 'ith day of the present tnonth, of January, you and each of you, be drawn on 
a hurdle to the place of execution, and that you be there hanged by tlie neck until 
you are dead: and may God have mercy on your souls." 

We were on Saturday last called upon by old Mr. La-wton, of Lyme — the be- 
reaved, sorrow-stricken father of Sylvester A. Lawton — one of the ill-fated prisoners 
who were executed at Kingston, (as our readers will recollect,) on the 4th of Janu- 
ary last. The old gentleman showed us two letters, written by his son, the day 
before hi^ execution, of veiy similar purport — one of which, in compliance with his 
leq^uestj we publish below : 

" Kingston, Fort Henry, January 3, 1839. 

'^ Dear Parents : 

"I now take my pen to write you a few lines, for the last time. Before these 
few lines vnll reach you, I shall be no more ; but I do earnestly beg and beseech of 
you not to moirni for me ; but to feel wiUing to submit to the hand of God and re- 
joice AAith me, for I feel a perfect resignation to 'my fate, and feel willing to leave 



APPENDIX. 63 

you all in the hand of God, for he is able to comfort you. Oh, dear father and mo- 
ther, do not repine nor murmur, but feel perfectly willing that I should leave this 
world of sin and wo, and go home to Jesus. Oh, that you could feel to rejoice 
with me, to tbmk that my soul is so near the portals of eternal glory. I shall soon 
leave this world behind me, with all its allurmg vanhies. 1 feel to exclaim with the 
Apostle Paul : ' Oh ! Death, where is thy sting ? Oh ! Grave, where is thy victory ." 

" I have selected the 16th chapter of Proverbs, and 25th verse, (I think,) for my 
funeral discourse— which is this : ' There is a way that seemeth light unto a man, 
but the end thereof are the ways of death.' 1 should like, if convenient, to have it 
preached at the school-house at Chaumont, by Mr. Whitman, of Indian Ridge. I 
also want him to read the 51st Psalm, for it has been my prayer to God. I hope 
that my death will be a warning to all Americans, to shun not only evi), but every 
appearance of evil. I'ell Mr. Chapman to impress upon the minds of all, the un- 
reasonableness of interfering with the affairs of the people of Canada. The people 
here feel for the prisoners. I have received much kindness, and better treatment 
from the officers of this place than I had reason to expect. The honorable high 
sheriff has done his duty as an officer of the government to which he belongs— and 
has treated us with feelings of humanity and kindness, for which he deserves the 
thanks of every prisoner, and also of their friends. 

" Give my love to all the people of that vicinity. Tell them that I remember 
them in my prayers, and hope to meet them in glory. * * * * 

" Dear parents, I send you my love, and a long farewell, hoping to meet you in 
heaven, where there will be no more separation. 
" Your most loving and 

" Affectionate son, till death, 

*' SYLVESTER A. LAWTON » 



N GTE ELEVENTH. 

The foUowuig documents place sir George Arthur m no very enviable light before 
a Christian and mercy-loving people. His speech to his parUament is sufficient to 
condenui hjin m the eyes of ail honest men. 

From the Upiier Canada Gazette, Toronto, February 27, 1839. 

SIR GEORGE ARTHUR'S SPEECH TO HIS PARLIAMENT. 

Honorable Gentlemen of the Legislative Council : and, Gentlemen of the House of 
Asssembly : 
The internal tranquiUity of the Province, and the present security of its frontier, 
enable me, after a recess of unusual length, to meet you in Proyincial Parhament. 
The postponement of the pressent Session has been mduced by the pressing and 
paramount duties, in which many of you have been engaged, comiected with the pub- 
lic defence, and the administration of justice. But we have now an opportunity to 
turn our attention to devising measures for the peace, welfare, and good government 
of the colony, free from the paralyzing suspicion of mternal ti-eachery, or the exas- 
perating influence of foreign aggressions ; and upon this happy result of the zeal, 
constancy and bravery, of the loyal Upper Canadian people, under the most trying 
circumstances, I offer you my hearty congratulations. 



64 APPBNDIX. 

The situation of the Province is so novel and pecuHar, that I feel called upon to 
exceed the ordinary limits of a speech at the opening of Parliament, in order to review 
recent occurrences, and to trace effects to their causes, as a guide to present and future, 
legislation. 

Eno-land, af peace with all the world, and relying implicitly, not only on the loy- 
alty of her North American subjects, but on the faith of treaties, and thp existence of 
most friendly relations with the United States, had gradually withdrawn most of her 
troops from this Continent. 

Encouraged by this absence of military power, the discontented in Lower Canada, 
after a long and vexatious parliamentary opposition, and an obstinate rejection of 
every conciliatoiy effort on the part of the government, at last broke out into open 
rebellion ; and incited by their example, the disaffected in this province, conjiden- 
imlly relying on assistance from the neighboring frontier, and secure, in the event of 
failure, of finding an asylum there, made a sudden attempt to overthrow this Gov- 
ernment, and to .sever the Canadas from the Parent State. 

The hopes of the disaffected in both provinces, however, met with signal disap- 
pointment ; and in Upper Canada particularly, the miUtia were found, not only equal 
to the immediate suppression of insurrection, but a portion of its force from the 
Eastern District, was enabled to march into Lower Canada, to assist in overawing 
the disposition to revolt which still existed there. 

Such would have been the end of rebellion in Upper Canada, had not the disaffec- 
tion, which grew originally out of the hope of Foreign interference, continued to 
receive life and support from the same source. The repose gained was of short 
continuance, for no sooner had some of the leading tmitors escaped across the boun- 
dary, than they associated themselves with a ninnber of the border population— 
robhed the public arsenals there — and made several audacious, but signally unsuc- 
cessful attempts, to invade and make a lodgment on British territory. 

The authorities of the United States, having had ample time to suppress these out- 
rac-es, our militia were gradually withdrawn Jrom the frontier, and were in the 
course of being disbanded, when it was discovered that a body nf foreigners and 
traitors had secretly iniroduced themselves into the province, from the States of New 
York and Michigair. Some of their emissaries were dispatched into the London 
District, while others hoped successfully to raise the standard of rebellion in the 
Niai^ara District ; but the attempt Avas suppressed in the bud — the militia of the sur- 
roundino- country at once rushed to arms, and captured such of the banditti as did not 
succeed in making good their flight to tlie American shore. 

The wanton and violent destructio)r of a British steamboat within American waters, 
by a gang of ruffians from the main-land of the United States, previously showed 
that the feeling of hostility had not abated on the frontier; and circumstances 
attended that outrage which indicated that it proceeded from an organized body of ene- 
mies. ^ This suspicion was immediately afterward strengthened by information, 
taken upon oath, detailing the secret signs, oj-ganization and intentions, of the society 
of Patriot Hunters ; and the confessions and declarations of the captive foreigners 
and traitors, who were taken in the Niagara District, corroborated this intelligence. 

But notwithstanding the reasons I had for placing confidence in this information— 
gtf-the secrecy observed by the conspirators — the extreme wickedness and rashness 
of the proposed measure— THE SILENCE OF THE FRONTIER PRESS, BE- 
FORE SO CLAMOROUS^eO— and the quiet of the frontier towns, at one time so 
agitated— were well calculated to cause the numbers and resources of the conspirators 
to be underrated, and to induce a belief that the presumptuous project of invading 
Canada would not be attempted. 



APPENDIX. 65 

After a short while, however, further proof was given that a conspiracy was ac- 
tually organized, and that the combination extended along the whole hne of the 
frontier, from east to west. I thought, however, that the accounts brought to me 
must be exaggerated : and that the parties named as being accomplices, could never 
have so far compromised their characters, as to have countenanced such a scheme ; 
and though silently proceeding to make some essential preparations for defence, I 
still did not entirely rely upon the statements which were at that time nwide to the 
Government. 

But as the information I continued to receive became more minute, and proceeded 
from various quarters, I could no longer doubt that the confederacy comprised a body 
of MANY THOUSAND PERSONS, Avhose numbers and resources were daily in- 
creasing; and what constituted the most revolting and alarming feature of this 
odious transaction was, the positive declaration, that many persons of wealth, and 
NOT A FEW PUBLIC FUNCTIONARIES in the frontier cities and towns, had 
intimately connected themselves with THIS CRIMINAL ALLIANCE. 

As the crisis drew nearer, strangers, without ostensible business, and under various 
pretences, were discovered to be scattered through the Province. It was ascertained 
that constant intercourse was kept up between THE LODGES OF CONSPIRA- 
TORS IN THE UNITED STATES, and their adherents in Canada. The hopes 
of the disaffected appeared suddenly to revive. The intelligence from various quar- 
ters conveyed to this Government became more definite, showing the immediate 
intention of the enemy to be THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH STEAM- 
BOATS, and the seizing by surprise and simultaneously, several posts within the 
Canadian boundaries, where the disloyal might rally around the invaders assembled 
in arms, and procure reenforcements and supplies from the United States, without 
the risk of any coUision with the American Authorities. An insurrection in the 
Lower Province was to be the signal for hostilities all along the line. 

Under these circumstances, I took decisive measures to give immediate confidence 
to the country, and to insure the security of the Province : and in now meeting you, 
although I deeply deplore that her Majesty's faithful subjects have been exposed to 
the greatest privations and hardships, and to the severest domestic injuries, I never- 
theless enjoy the satisfaction of believing, that omng to our state of preparation at 
every point, the loss of valuable lives has been limited, THE MORAL CHARAC- 
TER of the people of Upper Canada strikingly exhibited, and a spirit roused through- 
out the Province, that will long survive passing events, and greatly tend to the 
future strength, security, and tranquillity of the country. 

After all the preparations that were so many months in progress, and after the 
expenditure of such large sums of money, voluntarily contributed, as are generally 
given reluctantly even for national objects, the conspirators and revolutionists were 
SO ENTIRELY OVERAWED as to have limited their operations to one attack 
upon our frontier, near Prescott, and to another in the vicinity of Sandwich. Qci" Not 
a subject of her Majesty joined them after their landing ; -£ji) in both attempts they 
were signally defeated — and the result was the destruction or capture of nearly the 
whole of THE BANDITTI. 

In alluding to these events, it is impossible for me to praise too highly the gallan- 
try of the jnilitia, the fidelity and prompt services of THE INDIAN WARRIORS, 
and the patriotism of a vast majority of the inhabitants of this Province, who have 
conspicuously vied with each other in the manifestation of a devoted attachment to 
our MOST GRACIOUS Sovereign— of an ENTHUSIASTIC affection for their 
country — and of deep regard for their revered Constitution. 

Our gr«at security against the dangers resulting from a combinatioa b«twwn the 
5 



66 APPENDIX. 

disaifected in the Province, and their confederates among the population of the con- 
tiguous country, consists m \W OUR HAPPY UNION ^o ^'i* the British Empire. 
The main foundation of the hopes of discontented persons in this province, and of 
their foreign supporters, has been a mischievous notion industriously propagated, 
that England would desert her transatlantic possessions in their hour of diiEculty and 
danger — that whenever the machinations of internal traitors, or threats of external 
hostility, might render the protection of these colonies burthensome, the assistance 
of the mother country would be withdraAMi, and their loyal inhabitants left alone to 
support a most unequal conflict. This false and pernicious opinion has given en- 
couragement to treason — influenced the conduct of ihe wavering — excited the appre- 
hensions of the timid — and even put to a severe test the constancy of the loyal and 
resolute. 9^ IT HAS TURNED THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION FROM 
OUR SHORES — transferred the overflowings of British capital into other channels — 
impaired public credit — depreciated the value of every description of property — and 
in a word, has been the prohhc souice of almost all our public calamities. -456 

Recent events, however, have clearly demonstrated that the fidelity of the mass of 
the people ,of tjiis province is not to be shaken by the severest trials. Experience 
has also pioved, that imder all circrunstances you may confidently rely on Qcf^the 
fostering care -4:^ of the British Empire ; and I have been directed by her Majesty 
to convey to you the most positive assurances of HER CONTINUED PROTEC- 
TION and support. 

At the same time, I do not wish to inspire you with a belief, which I am very far 
fi'om entertaining, that Ocr the dangers with which we have been threatened are at 
an end. -4)0 The hopes of our enemies have certainly been greatly humbled, and 
their schemes disconcerted, by the failure of their repeated attempts to seduce the 
Queen's subjects from their allegiance, and thus to overrun the country ; but all the 
motives in which these attempts originated— THE LOVE OF PLUNDER— an avidity 
to seize our fertile lands, and AN IMPATIENT DESIRE TO EXTEND RE- 
PUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS, continue to operate with unabated force, while mi- 
happily new and deeper impressions have since been supeiadded. That men agitated 
by such feelings will remain quiet, longer than they are constrained by fear, is not to 
be expected ; and while I most sincerely iesire reconciliation, and conjure you to 
promote it by every honorable means, I do not hesitate to assert, on the sure ground 
of experience, that UPON OUR OWN ABILITY TO REPEL AND PUNISH 
HOSTILE AGGRESSION, WE IVIUST HENCEFORTH CHIEFLY DEPEND. 
Anroag the considerations arising from this impression, I deem it advisable to invite 
your early and serious attention to such amendments in our mihtia laws, as shall 
place this force upon the besi possible footing — efficient, but NOT BURTHEN- 
SOME, either to the government, or to the people. " 

One of my principal and most arduous duties has been the disposal of the NT"^^ 
MEROUS CRIMINALS who have fallen into the hands of justice. With iespoct 
to such of the Q,ueen's subjects as were concerned in the civil commotions during last 
winter, her Majesty's Government have uniformly desired ^ merciful adminhira' 
..t-wa ^ of the law. In the punishment of the invaders of the province, I have acted 
upon the same principle, and have anxiously endeavored to confine capital punish- 
ment within the naii-owest limits, which a due regard to the public v^elfare aixl se- 
cruity would admit. But the reiteration of unprovoked injuries, called for increased 
firmness m the administration of justice, aird forced upon ]ae tire painful necessity 
of making some severe examples. 

The case of her Majesty's subjects who have suflered in their persona or property, 
claims yom- early attention. The wanton destruction of the steamboat Sir Robert 



APPENDIX. 67 

Ped— the pillage of the farms on Pointe au Pele Islaiid, and the river St. Clair— the 
robberies at the Short Hills — the damage done at Prescott and Sandwich, with the 
burning of the Thames steamer, form together an aggregate of extensive loss, most 
serious to the sufferers, and have occasioned earnest application i'or relief. 

It gives me the greatest pleasure to inform you, that her Majesty has been most 
graciously pleased to extend to the womided officers, non-commissioned officers and 
men, of the Provmcial militia, in arms since the insurrection last winter, the same 
liberal provision as is granted to her Majesty's regular land and naval forces : and to 
make a similar beneficent provision for the widows of those officers in the Provin- 
cial corpse, who may have fallen in action. 

************ 4: 

I HAVE, to a Hmited extent, EXERCISED THE POWER vested in me by the 
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. In doing so, I have proceeded vsnith the 
greatest caution, and with a sincere desire, that no restraint might be imposed on 
personal liberty, which the public safety did not imperatively demand. 

The progress which this beautiful country seems destined to make in population 
and wealth, HAS BEEN MATERIALLY OBSTRUCTED by the difficulties and 
dangers with which it has, for some time past, been surroimded. 

By THE GOODNESS OF.AN OVER-RULING PROVIDENCE, those dangers 
have, however, in a great degree been averted : and I humbly hope that THE SAME 
ALMIGHTY ARM, WHICH HAS HITHERTO PROTECTED US, will soon 
place Upper Canada in such a state of tranquillity and security, as will permit the 
full development of lier vast natural resources. 
, To accelerate the arrival of that period, and in cordial conjunction witii you to 
promote, by wise and salutary legislation, the prosperity and happiness of this inter- 
esting colony, will be the object of my earnest desire, and unceasing exertions. 

" Buffalo, Nov. 1843. 

"My Dear Sir: 

" I desire to assure you, that I fully corroborate all you say in the manuscripts 
you read to me, relative to the Government and Island of Van Dieman's Land, where 
I resided for twelve years. I was veiy perfectly acquainted with the administration 

of Colonel George Arthur, and himself, particularly. Dunng governorship 

of thirteen years in Van Dieman's Land, he signed the death-warrants of fifteen 
liwidred and eight persons, only eight of whom, were sayed from the guillotine by 
Hbeing sent to a penal settlement, and doomed to a life of toil in irons, far worse than 
death. I have seen nine hanging on the same scaffold, at the same time, and four- 
teen in one week. I heard Judge Montague, while on the bench, charging a mih- 
tiiry jury, and the attorney general, E. McDowal, while pleading for the crown, 
say : ' That any numLcj of witnesse.? like these,' (such as were then giving testi- 
mony,) ' could be procured for a brittle of rum and half a crotvn each, to bring 
home to any person in the colony, any crime that might be laid to his charge.' I 
also saw natives executed after having undergone a mock trial, without the least 
consciousness of what would be the result of what was going on. * * * * 
" J have the honor to be, 

" My dear sir, your obedient servant, 

"JESSE MORRELL." 

This letter was addressed to Mr. Benjamin Wait, whose heroic wife shortened 
our captivity. 

5* 



68 APPENDIX. 

The succeeding extract speaks in volumes of the tyranny which Arthur invented 
to torture the convicts and prisoners of Van Dieman's Land. No wonder that his 
cannibalish appetite -vv^as dissatisfied with a governorship in North America. 

From a Rpview of the British House of Commons' Report, in the London Spectator, Aug. 25. 



" The punishments of convicts for crimes committed in the penal colonies are horri- 
We. In 1834, one thousand persons were employed in the chain-gangs of New 
South Wales; and in 1837, seven hundred in those of Van Dieman's Land. Gov- 
ernor Arthur said that this just pruushment was ' as severe a one as could be inflicted 
on man ;' and it is well known that Sir George is apt to believe that 'man' can 
endure a good deal. 

" They are locked up from sunset to sunrise in the caravans or boxes used for 
this description of persons, wliich hold from twenty to twenty-eight men, but in 
which the whole number can neither stand upright nor sit down at the same time, 
(except with thcii legs at right-angles to their bodies,) and which, in some instances, 
do not allow more than eighteen inches in width for each individual to He do\\Tr upon 
on the bare boards. They are kept to work under a strict military guard during the 
day, and liable to suffer flagellation for trifling oflences, such as an exhibition of 
obstinacy, insolence, and the like. Being in chains, discipline is more easily pre- 
served among them, and escape more easily prevented than among the road parties 
out of chains. 

" The soldiers employed to guard these chain-gangs frequently fuid their own friends 
and relations among them, and themselves become drunken and vicious in the extreme. 

For crimes of the greatest magnitude, not punishable by death, convicts are trans- 
ported to Norfolk Island, Moreton Bay, and Port Arthur. Port Arthur is on a 
small and barren peninsula, coiuiected with Van Dieman's Land by a narrow strip 
of land. Norfolk Island is a beautiful volcanic island, about one thousand miles 
from the eastern shores of Australia, and, except in one place, inaccessible to boats. 
Tliis lovely spot has been converted into a perfect hell. The condition of the con- 
victs is one of luimitigated wretchedness. To escape from it, men have chopped off 
the heads of their fellow-prisoners with hoes, knowing that they should be imme- 
diately sent to Sydney, to be tried and hanged ! Attempts at mutiny have not been 
uncommon at Norfolk Island. In 1834, the mutmeers took possession of the Island, 
and killed some of the guard ; they were subsequently overpowered, and eleven w»re 
executed. To Judge Barton, who tried them, one of these men observed, in a man- 
ner which the Judge said ' drew tears from his eyes and wning his heart :' 

" ' Let a man be what he will when he comes here, he is soon as bad as the rest : 
a man's heart is taken from him, and there is given to him the heart of a heasL' 

"At Port Arthur, men commit murder, "in order to enjoy the excitement of being 
sent up to Hobart-town" to be tried and executed. Macquarrie Harbor (now aban- 
doned,) was a penal settlement of Van Dieman's Land, of the same description as 
Norfolk Island and Port Ar-thui- ; and an -accomit is given of the fate of the convicts 
who attempted to escape from it, between the 3rd of January, 1822, and the 16th 
of May, 1827. Of one hundred and sixteen who absconded, sevGnty-live perished 
in the Avoods ; one was hanged for murdering and eating Iris companion ; two were 
shot ; eight were murdered, and six eaten by their comrades ; twenty-four escaped to 
the settled districts ; thirteen were hanged for bush-ranging, and two for murder ; 
, making altogether one hundred and one, out of the one hundred and »i:?f:teen who 
came to an untimely end. . 



APPENDIX. 69 

"On the whole, the committee think that transportation, though so very unequal 
and certain a punishment, is more severe than the accounts sent home by settlers and 
criminals ■wouii lead ill-informed persons to suppose. It is a fact, however, that in 
England transportation is not more dreaded than simple exile, by a large portion of 
the classes whose habits and crimes render them more likely to experience its reali- 
ties. It is more feai-ed in the country than in London, where it inspires little appre- 
hension." 

The above sketch, slight and faint compared to what is to be found in the report 
and evidence, will give some idea of the state of the convict population exclusively. 
Let us now turn to the condition of society generally in the penal colonies of Aus- 
tralia. 

" On this head, criminal statistics furnish appalhng facts. In Van Dieman's Land, 
in 1837, the convicts were 18,000, and the free population 28,000; *and the number 
of' persons brought before the police amounted to 17,000. One-seventh of the popu- 
lation were fined for drunkenness. In New South Wales, the number of convictions 
for highway robbery alone exceeds the total number of convictions for all manner of 
offences in England, taking the difference of population into accoimt. Rapes, mur- 
der, and attempts at murder, are as common in New South Wales, as petty larcenies 
in England. 

" In short, in order to give an idea of the amount of crime in New South Wales, 
let it be supposed that the 17,000 offenders who last year were tried and convicted 
in this country of various offences, before the several courts of assize and quarter- 
sessions, had all of them been condemned for capital crimes ; that 7,000 of them 
had been executed, ;md the remainder transported for life ; that, in adcUtion, 70,000 
other offenders had been convicted of the minor offences of forgery, sheep-stealing, 
and the like ; then, in proportion to their respective populations, the state of crime 
and punishment in England and her Australian colonies would have been precisely 
the same. 

' " Burglaries and robberies are committed in Sydney in the middle of the day. The 
drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a large portion of the population, and 
the want of continuity in the buildings affording easy access to the backs of shops 
and houses, and the means of escaping from the police, give great facilities to plun- 
derers. And even when ofienders are taken, they are generally tried by juries com- 
posed chiefly of emancipist shop-keepers. The quantity of spirits annually con- 
sumed in New South Wales amoiuits to four gallons a-head. In Sydney, with a 
free population of sixteen thousand, there were, in 1836, two hundred and nineteen 
licensed public houses, and an immense number of unlicensed spirit-shops. These 
tippling places were kept and frequented by the most abandoned wretches. 

" The disproportions of the sexes occasions crimes, which, to quote the words of 
Captain Maconochie, 'make the blood curdle.' Even the young children of re- 
spectable setlers have been made the victims of unmentionable atrocities. It is im. 
possible to convey any idea of the horrors which the witnesses' before the committee 
shuddered to disclose : 

" All that defies the worBt that pen expresses," 

IS let loose in Van Dieman's Land. 

"Ajid this amount of sin and misery is annually increased by the direct operation 
of the laws of England, framed forsooth, for the punishment and preveirtion of crime ! 
The philanthropists, who rail at American slavery, should turn their attention to 
Van Dieman's Land. The vice and wretchedness produced by negro slavery, are 
absolutely, of small account when contrasted with the atrocities of the transportation 
system!" 



70 APPENDIX. 

These extracts, taken from papers published in Van Dieman'e Land, show how 
very popular, and in what estimation he was held in by the people of the island — 
this must be his true character after a twelve years trial. 

From the Trumpeter. 

Glorious News ! — At length the happy intelligence has arrived of the removal of 
the most unpopular governor that ever ruled a British colony. Yes, reader, Colonel 
Arthur is ordered home, and must this time obey the orders he has received from the 
Secretary of State ! 

The downcast looks which formerly accompanied the greetings in the streets have 
disappeared, and the happy, the glorious intelligence has to all appearances made 
people ten years younger. 

The colonists, to a man, rejoice — a splendid dinner is to be given on Thursday 
week, to commemorate tlie happy day on which the glorious news arrived — A 
GRAND ILLUMINATION will also be held the same evening, and fireworks of 
all descriptions will be most profusely let off iii honor of the occasion. 

A public meeting is also to be called, in order to frame a petition to his Majesty, 
to thank him for his kindness in listening to the prayers of the people — that Colonel 
Arthur should be recalled ! 

Colonel Arthur is at last positively recalled — the officiial notice reached him by the 
Elphinstone prison ship, on Tuesday. His successor is not named. 

Never has it fallen to our lot to communicate to our readers such welcome intel- 
ligence as they find this day in om' first short leader. It is with feelijigs of joy and 
sincere thankfubiess, that we heard the joyful news brought by the good ship 
Elpliinslone, on Tuesday. We will teach our little ones to remember while they 
live, and to teach their children to know the name of the ship that gladdened the 
heart of many a desponding parent with the tidings, that the cause of their misery 
and suffering, the evil genius of the colony, was at length ordered to repair to the 
presence of his sovereign, to answer tlie load of charges preferred against him, by 
some of the unhappy victims of his oppression during the last twelve years. This 
day will indeed be a happy jubilee aird rejoicing tlii-oughout this island,- for to-day 
will the glad tidings have reached all its mhabitants. We will relate the particulars 
as we have collected them. 

From the True Colonist. 

A pubhc meeting will immediately be called to thanli tlie king, for having at 
length had mercy on his poor afflicted subjects in this colony, and to present a true 
address to Colonel Arthur from the colonists. It is p^i'oposed to |iave an illiunina- 
lion on Monday, with a bonfi:-e and fireworks at the Battery Point. He will be 
wafted from these shores with the sighs, the groa,ns, and the curses of many a 
broken-hearted parent, and many a destitute child, which owe their misery to the 
fooKsh and wicked system of mis-government, by which the colony has been 
rui) ed. He found the colony rapidly rising to wealth and respectability— he has 
lelt it sunk in debt and niisciy. He has neglected the useful road-^, end r'uined tho 
i,griculliual interest — he nns th- father of usury, the patron of hypocrisy, falsehood, 
and deceit— the protector of perjuiy— and the rewarder of perjurers. His syr-tem, 
anA the exar^ le of his Government has destroyed all confidence between man and 
man, aiid sapped the very foimdation of society and morals. His name will long be 
remembered with detestation and horror by thousands of the wretched victims of his 



APPENDIX. 71 

From a Placard posted in Launcestown. 

To-morroiv ought to he a day of General Thxniksgiving for the deliverance fvoiti 
the iron hand of Governor Arthur. We have now a prospect of breathing. The 
accursed gang of bloodsuckers will be destroyed. Boys will be seen no more upon 
police benches, to insult respectable men. Perjury will cease to be countenanced, 
and a gang of felons will no longer be permitted to violate the laws of civiUzed 
society. 

From the Launcestown Advertiser. 

Throughout the -whole 'period of his government, the military have been placed in 
too prominent a position. Lieutenants and ensigns, fresh from the frolics of Chathan), 
have been turned into justices of the peace ; and the whole administration of the 
colony has been pipe-clayed into a service of an amphibious, half-military, half- 
civil complexion. 

From the True Colonist. 

It was with feelings of the most sincere satisfaction, we announced in our last 
number the arrival of the "good ship" Elphinstone, from England, bringing the 
wry gratifying intelligence of the recall of Colonel George Arthur, after an adminis- 
tration of twelve yeai's; during the whole of which long period, the people have 
been rendered wretched, unhappy, discontented, and miserable, by the misrule of his 
Government. 

Such was the extraordinary demand for Bent's News, of Saturday last, in con- 
sequence of tlie intense anxiety of the people to obtain an account of the recall of 
Colonel Arthur, that we have, with infinite pleasure, been obliged to print a second 
edition, and had not the publication of our journal been unusually late, owing to the 
drunkenness of our printers, occasioned too by the recall of so unpopular a governor, 
our Kttle, though popular News Rei^ister, would have still met with a more exten- 
sive sale by many hundreds. 

We offer no apology in presenting our readers with the several accounts fi'om 
every newspaper published on the iskurd — -whatever may be their principles, either 
Government or Official — Opposition or Independent — of the recall of Colonel Arthur. 

From the Colonial Times. 

Governor Arthur's Recall! ! Oh! Glorious News!! — It was with the ut- 
most satisfaction that the inhabitants of Hobart Town welcomed the happ3/ intc IJi- 
gence publicly made known on Wednesday last, that Colonel Arthur is forthwith to 
be removed from this Government. * * * * * * * * 

A worse British governor never ruled during the pre.^ent ceniury. * * '' 

No sooner had the recall of folonel Arthur become public, than, agreeable to his 
system, his friends were ordered to "get up an address."' It mattered not of what 
nature the address was, but something or other must be done to send to the secretary 
of state, in order to show how very much he was beloved. At first, a genera ■ id- 
di-ess was tried, but it proved a total failure ! Mrs. Pedder wrote out a very fair 
one, which Mr. Pedder signed and sent to the colonial treasurer, to gc round in his 
carriage, and get as many signattires to it as he could ! Of course, the weight and 



72 APPENDIX. 

influence of the paymaster was sufficient to command the signatures of some, others 
were in duty bound obliged to sign, having enriched themselves under Colonel Ar- 
thur's government. By degrees, it became necessary to confine the address entirely 
to the Government officers, and after very — very numerous positive refusals to attach 
names to such a document, it made its sorry appearance Math the sorry number of 
thirty-four .' 

The whole colony seems in motion ; the smallest township in the interior appears 
quite animated, and but one feehng alone prevails, and that is delight that the ruler 
who brought this colony from wealth to poverty, from abundance to famine, is about 
to depart. Few people care who the successor may be, so that he be an honest man 
— a worse governor than Colonel Arthur cannot be, or one that would allow such a 
ruinous system to prevail ! It is lamentable, however, to think of the fate of those 
colonists already sacrificed, and Colonel Arthur, were he made to disgorge all his 
wealth, would make no reparation, worth notice, to the people whom he has ren- 
dered almost destitute of food ! 



NOTE TWELFTH 



Among all the phenomena which occasionally dispel the monotony of a voyage 
to the Indies, I class the scenery of the setting sim on the tropical ocean, as surpass- 
ing, in sublimity and grandeur of imagery, all others. But while teeming in its 
richness of light and shade, and irresistibly enchaining the eyes and imagination of 
the traveller by its gorgeous and fantastic changes ;— the experienced mariner talces 
those glimpses of atmospherical pantomime as preludes of danger before the torna- 
does and hiirricanes, which at periods devastate the tropical regions ; and fails not 
to make speedy preparation for a recurrence of those sudden tempests which they 
too often betoken. The mariners, leaning over the ship, (says St. Pierre, in his 
studies of Nature,) admire in silence these aerial landscapes. Sometimes the sub- 
lime spectacle presents itself to them at the hour of prayer, and seems to invite them 
to lift up their hearts and their voices to Heaven. It changes its appearance every 
nistant: what was just now luminous, becomes, in a manner, colored simjily; and 
what is now colored will be, by and by, in the shade. The forms are as impressive 
as the shades. They are by turns, islands, hamlets, isles clothed with the palm- 
frees, vast bridges stretching over rivers, fields of gold, amethysts and rubies— or 
rather something more than all these — they are celestial colors and forms which no 
pencil can pretend to imitate, and which no language can describe. 



NOTE THIRTEENTH. 



The following is cut from the " London Gazette," showing the mildness and 
magnanimity manifested toward American officials : 

" The fact is, the whole tribe of officials, from the servile President up to the most 
ragged of the nrob sovereigns, hare acted a part of the basest duplicity, and don« 



APPENDIX. 73 

everything in their power to succor villainy from retributive justice. With the fair- 
est promises of protection from American invasion, we have again and again been 
attacked by their hordes of unpiuiished scoundrels. We have appealed to them in 
vain — fair words are all we get. We have demanded punishment of the aggressors, 
but it is left undone. They are protected and cherished. Van Buren has lied for 
them — Marcy has lied for them — Generals Scott, Worth, and Wool have lied for 
them — the district attorneys have all hed for them — and the whole host of journahsts 
throughout the broad Union have done nothing but utter falsehood upon falsehood to 
screen a band of vagabonds, who, not content with violating their own laws, must 
attempt to trample upon those of a neighboring and friendly country. Richly does 
the United States deserve the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, as it has already their 
abominations. 



NOTE FOURTEENTH. 

The following lines express beautifully the death of Nattage — and the poet 
doubtless felt his eubject : 



DEATH OF AN EXILE. 



Thou art gone to the grave, and there '« none to deplore thee— 
No kindred friends around thy desolate tomb, 

No voice but the winds, chant a requiem o'er thee, 
No epitaph points to the Ezile^s last home ! 

Thou art gone to the grave — to thy last earthly pillow ; 

Thy wrongs, poor forsaken, were known but to thee; 
No more art thou tossed on life's troubled billow ; 

From the cold blasts of sorrow, thy spirit is free. 

Thou art gone to the grave, and all silent and lonely, 

The star of thy being hath melted away. 
And friendship's last tear cannot even bemoan thee, 

Unkown, and unwept, thou art gone to deoay. 

Thou art gona to the grave, poor unfortunate stranger, 
Thy sorrowing bosom's last sigh had been given ; 

Thou art gone to the exile's last refuge from danger, 
And O, may rich treasures await thee in heaven. 

Thrice happy thou art, poor, forsaken, and lone, 
If thou weit prepared thy last summons to hear. 

While the tlust sweetly sleeps in the mouldering tomb, 
Thy spirit awakes in a far brighter sphere 

Farewell ! when the light o'er yon azure ocean, 

Shall fade, my vision no more to illume, 
Oh ! may I but join thy i.ipt spirit's devotion, 

Wh»re glory enriche* thy haavenly home 



•^4 APPENDIX. 



From an Impartial Account of the Civil War ia the Canadas, London, 1838. 

■ 9 ? ? ? ? ? 

THE DECLARATION OF THE REFORMERS OF THE CITY 

OF TORONTO TO THEIR FELLOW-REFORMERS 

IN UPPER CANADA. 

The lime has arrived, after nearly half a century's forbearance under increasmg 
and agravated misrule, when the duty we owe our country and posterity requires 
from us the assertion of our rights and the redress of our wrongs. 

Government is foimded on the authoritj'' and is instituted for the benefit of a peo- 
ple ; when, therefore, any government long and systematically ceases to answer the 
great ends of its foundation, the people have a natural right given them by their Cre- 
ator to seek after and establish such institutions as mil yield the greatest quantity 
of happiness to the greatest number. 

Our forbearance heretofore has only been rewarded with an aggravation of our 
grievances ; and our past inattention to ©ur rights has been imgenerously and im- 
justly urged as evidence of the surrender of them. We have now to choose oji the 
one haird, between submission to the same blighted policy as hath desolated Ireland, 
and, on the other hand, the patriotic achievement of cheap, honest, and responsible 
government. 

The right was conceded to tlie present United States at the close of a successful 
levolution, to form a constitution for themselves ; and the loyalists, wdth their 
descendants and others now peopling this portion of America, are entitled to the 
same liberty without the shedding of blood — more tliey do not ask ; less they ought 
not to have. But, while the revolution of the former has been rewarded with a 
consecutive prosperity rmexampled in the history of the world, the loyal valor of the 
latter alone remains amid the blight of misgovemment to tell them what they might 
have been, as u?e not less valiant sons of American Independence. Sir Francis Head 
has too truly portrayed our country " as standing in the flourishing continent of 
North America like a girdled tree with its drooping branches." But the laws of 
natme do not, and those of man ought no longer to exhibit this invidious and humil- 
iating comparison. 

The affairs of this country have been ever, against the spirit of the Constitutional 
Act, subjected in the most injurious manner to the interferences and interdictions of a 
success-ion of colonial ministers in England who have never visited the country, and 
who can never possibly become acquainted with the state of parties, or the conduct 
of public fimctionaries, except through official channels in the province, which are 
ill calculated to convey information necessary to disclose official dehnquencies, and 
correct public abuses; A painful experience has proved how impracticable it is for 
such a succession of strangers beneficially to direct and control the affairs of a people 
four thousand miles off; and being an impracticable system, felt to be intolerable by 
those whose good it was professedly intended, it ought to be abolished, and the 
domestic institutio-ns of the province so improved and administered by the local 
authorities as to render the people happy and contented. The system of baneful 
domination has been uniformly furthered by a Lieutenant-Governor sent among us as 
an uninformed, unsympathizing stranger, who, like Sir Francis, has not a single feel- 
ing in common mth the people, and whose hopes and responsibilities begin and end 
in Downing-street. And this baneful domination is further cherished by a legislative 



APPENDIX. 75 

eoimcil not elected, and, therefore irresponsible to the people for whom they legis- 
late, hut appointed by the ever-changing colonial minister for life, from pensioners 
on the bounty of the crown, official dependents, and needy expectants. 

Under this moctery of human government we have been insulted, injured, and re- 
duced to the brink of ruin. The due influence and purity of all our institutions have 
been utterly destroyed. Our governors are the mere instruments for effecting domina- 
tion from Downuig-street ; legislative councillors have been intimidated into executive 
compliance, as in the case of the late Chief Justice PoAvell, Mr. Baby, and others ; 
the executive comrcil has been stript of every shadow of responsibility and of every 
shade of duty ; the freedom and purity of elections have lately received, under Sir 
Francis Head, a final and irretrievable blow ; om' revenue has been and still is de- 
creasing to such an extent, as to render heavy additional taxation uidispensable foi' 
the payment of the interest of our public debt, incurred by a system of improvident 
and profligate expenditure; our public lands, although a chief source of wealth to a 
new coimtry, have been sold at a low valuation to speculating companies in London, 
and resold to the settlers at very advanced rates, the excess being remitted to England, 
to the serious impoverishment of the country ; the ministers of religion have been 
corrupted by the prostitution of the casual and territorial revenue, to salary and in- 
fluence them ; our clergy reserves, mstead of being devoted to the purposes of general 
education, though bo much needed and loudly demanded, have been in part sold, to 
the amount of upward of three hundred thousand dollars, paid into the military 
chest, and sent to England ; numerous rectories have been estabhshed, against the 
almost unanimous wishes of the people, with certain exclusive ecclesiastical spiritual 
rights and privileges, accorduig to the established Church of England, to the destruc- 
tion of equal religious rights ; public salaries, pensions, and sinecures, have been 
augmented in number and amouirt, notwithstanding the impoverishment of our 
revenue and cormtry ; and the parhament has, under the name of arrearages, paid 
the retrenchments made in past years by reform parliaments ; our judges have, in 
spite of our condition, been doubled, and wholly selected from the most violent po- 
litical partisans against our equal civil and religions liberties ; and a court of chancery 
suddenly adopted by a subservient parhament, E^ainst the long-cherished expectal i -^ns 
of the people against it, and its operation fearfully extended into the past, so as to 
jeopardize every title and toansaction from the beginning of the province to the pres- 
ent time. A law has been passed enabling magistrates, appointed dming pleasure, 
at the representation of a grand jury selected by a sheriff holding office during plea- 
sure, to tax the people at pleasure, A^athout theii' previous knowledge or consent, 
upon all their rateable propeity, to build and support workhouses for the refuge of 
the paupers invited by Sir Francis from the parishes in Great Britain ; thus unjustly 
and wickedly laying the foundation of a system which must result in taxation, pes- 
tilence, and'famine. Public loans have been authorized by improvident legislation 
to nearly eight millions of dollars, the surest way to make the people both poor and 
dependent ; the parhament, subservient to Sir Francis Head's bhghting administration, 
has, by an unconstitutional act, sanctioned by him, prolonged their duration after the 
demise of the Crown, thereby evading their present responsibihty to the people, de- 
priving them of the exercise of their elective franchise on the present occasion, and 
extending the period of their uiijust, unconstitutional and ruinous legislation with Sir 
Francis Head ; our best and most worthy citizens have been dismissed from the 
bench of justice, from the miUtia and other stations of honor and usefulness, for ex- 
ercising their rights as freemen and attending pubhc meetings for the regeneration of 
our condition, as instanced in the cases of Doctor Baldwin, Messrs. Scatchard, John- 
son, Small, Ridout, and others ; those of our fellow-subjects who go to England to 



7^ APPENDIX. 

represent our deplorable condition, are denied a hearing by a partial, unjust, and op- 
pressive government, while the authors and promoters of our wrongs are cordially 
and graciously received, and enlisted in the cause of our further wrongs and mis- 
government ; our public revenues are plundered and misapplied without redress, and 
unavailable securities make up the late defalcation of Mr. P. Robinson, the com- 
missioner of public lands, to the amount of eighty thousand dollars. Interdicts are 
continually sent by the colonial minister to the governor, and by the governor to the 
provincial parliament, to restrain and render futile their legislation, which ought to 
be free and unshackled ; these instructions, if favorable to the views and policy of 
the enemies of our country, are rigidly observed ; if favorable to public liberty, they 
are, as in the case of Earl Ripon's dispatch, utterly contemned, even to the passing 
of the ever-to-be-remembered and detestable everlasting salary Bill ; Lord Glenelg 
has sanctioned, in the king's name, all the violations of truth and of the constitution 
by Sir Francis Head, and both thanked and titled him for conduct, which, under any 
civilized government, would be the ground of impeachment. 

The British government, by themselves and through the Legislative council of 
their appointment, have refused their assent to laws the most wholesome and neces- 
sary for the public good, among which we may enumerate the intestate estate equal 
distribution bill ; the bill to sell the clergy reserves for educational purposes ; 
the bill to remove the corrupt influence of the executive in the choosing of juries, 
ana to secure a fair, free trial by jury ; the several bills to encourage emigration 
from foreign parts; the bills to secure the independence of the Assembly; the 
bill to amend the law of libel ; the bill to appoint commissioners 1o meet others 
appointed by Lower Canada, to treat on matters of trade and other matters of deep 
interest ; the bills to extend the blessings of education to the humbler classes in every 
township, and to appropriate annually a sum of money for the purpose ; the bill to 
dispose of the school lands in aid of education ; several bills for the improvement of 
the highways ; the bill to secure independence to voters, by establishing the vote by 
ballot ; the bill for the better regulation of elections of members of the Assembly, and 
to provide that they be held at places convenient for the people ; the bills for the 
relief of Quakers, Menonists and Tunkers ; the bill to amend the present oonoxious 
court of request laws, by allowing the people to choose the commissioners, and to 
have a trial by jury if desired; with other biUs to improve the administration of jus- 
tice and diminish unnecessary costs ; the bill to amend the charter of King's College 
University, so as to remove its partial and arbitrary system of government and edu- 
cation ; and the bill to allow free competition in banking. 

The king of England has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and 
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be 
obtained ; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He 
has interfered with the freedom of elections, and appointed elections to be held at 
places dangerous, inconvenient,>nd unsafe for the people to asemble at, for the pur- 
pose of fatiguing them into his measures, through the agency of pretended represent- 
atives ; and has, through his Legislative Council, prevented provision being made 
for quiet and peaceable elections, as in the case of the late returns at BeA-^erly. 

He has dissolved the late House of Assembly, for opposing with manly firmness 
Sir Francis Head's invasion on the rights of the people to a wholesome control 
over the revenue, and for insisting that the persons conducting the government should 
be responsible for their official conduct to the country, through its representatives. 

He has endeavored to prevent the peophng of this province and its advancement in 
wealth ; for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, 
refusing to pass others to encoure^e their migration hither, and raising the conditions 



APPENDIX. 77 

of new appropriations of the public lands, large tracts of which he has bestowed 
upon unworthy persons, his favorites, while deserving settlers from Germany, and 
other countries, have been used cruelly. 

He has rendered the administration of Justice liable to suspicion and distrust, by 
obstructing laws for establishing a fair tiial by Jury ; by refusing to exclude the 
chief criminal judge from interfering in political business, and by selecting as the 
judiciary violent and notorious partisans of his arbitrary power. 

He has sent a standing army into the sister Province, to coerce them to his unlaw- 
ful and unconstitutional measures, in open violation of their rights and liberties, and 
has received with marks of high approbation military officers who interfered with 
the citizens of Montreal, in the jnidst of an election of their representatives, and 
brought the troops to coerce them, who shot several persons dead wantonly, in the 
public .streets. 

Considering the great number of lucrative appointments held by strangers to the 
country, whose chief merit appears to be their subserviency to any and everj' ad- 
ministration, we may say with our brother colonists of old : " He has sent hither 
swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." 

The English Parliament have interfered with our internal aifairs and regulations, 
by the passage of grievous and tp-annical enactments, for taxing us heavily Avithout 
our consent, for prohibitmg us to purchase many articles of the first importance at 
the cheapest European or American markets, and compelling us to buy such goods 
and merchandise at an exorbitant price, in markets of which England has a monopoly. 

They have passed resolutions for our coercion, of a character so cruel and arbi- 
trary, that Lord Chancellor Brougham has recorded on the Journals- of the House of 
Peers, that " they set all considerations of soimd policy, of generosity, and of justice 
at defiance," are wholly subversive of " the fimdamental principle of the British 
Constitution, that no part of the taxes levied on the people shall be applied to any 
purpose whatever, without the consent of the representatives in Parliament," and 
that the Canadian " precedent of 1837, will ever after be cited in the support of .such 
oppressive proceedings, as often as the Commons of any Colony may withhold sup- 
plies, how justifiable soever their refusal may be;" and (adds his lordship) "those 
proceedings, so closely resembling the fatal measures that severed the United States 
from Great Britain, have their origin in principles, and derive their support from 
reasonings, which form a prodigious contrast to the whole grounds, and the only 
defence, of the policy during latter years, and so justly and so wisely sanctioned by 
the Imperial Parliament, in administering the aifairs of the mother country. Nor is 
it easy to imagine that the inhabitants of either the American or the European 
branches of the empire should contemplate so strange a contrast, without drawing 
inferences therefrom discreditable to the character of the legislature, and injurious to 
the future safety of the state, when they mark with what different measures we 
mete to six hundred thousand inhabitants of a remote Province, unrepresented in 
Parliament, and to six millions of our fellow citizens nearer home, and making 
themselves heard by their representatives, the reflection Avill assuredly arise in Can- 
ada, and may possibly find its way into Ireland, that the sacred rules of justice, the 
most worthy feelings of national generosity, and the soundest principles of enlight- 
ened pohcy, may be appealed to in vain, if the demands of the suitor be not also 
supported by personal interests, and party views, and political fears, among those 
whose aid he seeks ; while all men perceiving that many perso)is have found tliem- 
selves at liberty to hold a course toward an important but remote province, which 
their constituents never would sutfer to be piu'sued toward the most inconsiderable 
hurgh of the United Kingdom, an impression 'will inevitably be propagated most 



78 APPENDIX. 

dangerous to the maintenance of colonial dominion, that the people can never sai'ely 
intrust the powers of Government to any supreme authority not residing among 
themselves." 

In every stage of these proceedings, we have petitioned for redress in the most 
humble terms : our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries. 

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned 
them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable 
jm-isdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigra- 
tion and settlement liere, we have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, 
and we have conjm-ed them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these 
usurpations which would iirevitably interrupt our connection and correspondence. 
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. 

We, therefore, the Reformers of the City of Toronto, sympathizing with our fellow- 
citizens here and throughout the North American Colonies, who desire to obtain 
cheap, honest, and responsible government, the want of which has been the source 
of all their past grievances, as its continuance would lead to their utter ruin and 
desolation, aie of opinion, 

1. That the warmest thanks and admiration are due from the Reformers of Upper 
Canada to the honorablQ Louis Joseph Papineau, Esq., Speaker of the House of 
Assembly of Lower Canada, and his compatriots in and out of the Legislature, for 
their past uniform, manly, and noble independence, in favor of civil and religious 
liberty ; and for tlieir present devoted, honorable and patriotic opposition to the at- 
tempt of the British Government to violate their constitution without their consent, 
subvert the powers and privileges of their local parhament, and overawe them by 
coercive measures into a disgraceful abandonment of their just and reasonable wishes. 

2. And that the Reformers of Upper Canada are called upon by every tie of feel- 
ing, interest, and duty, to make common cause Avith their fellow-citizens of Lower 
Canada, whose successful coercion would doubtless be in time visited upon us, and the 
redress of whose grievances would be the best guarantee for the redress of our own. 

To render this cooperation the more effectual, we earnestly recommend to our 
fellow citizens that they exert themselves to ' organize pohtical associations ; that 
public meetings be held throughout the province ; mid that a convention of delegates 
be elected, and assembled at Toronto, to take into consideration the political con- 
dition of Upper Canada, vnth. authority to its members to appoint commissioners, to 
meet others to be named on behalf of Lower Canada and any of the other colonies, 
armed with suitable powers. as a Congress, to seek an eifectual remedy for the griev- 
ances of the colonies. 

T. D. MORRISON, Chairman of Committee. 
JOHN ELLIOT, Secretai-y. 

Committee. 
David Gibson, John Edward Tims, 

John Mackintosh, James H. Pkice, 

William J. O'Grady, John Doel, 

EDW.VRD Wright, M. Reynoxds, 

Robert McKay, James Armstrong, 

Thomas Elliott, James Hunter, 

E. B. Gilbert, John Armstrong, 

John Moi^ttgomert, William Ketchum, 

William L. Mackenzie. 



APPENDIX. 



79 



The kindness of heart which the venerable Thomas O'Connor has exhibited in the 
following address to the humane, on behalf of suffering innocence in Canada, is 
worthy of an Irish patriot and sufferer for liberty in the memorable 1798. We hope 
it will be responded to. It is also pleasing to see the excellent Dr. M'Nevin among 
the foremost friends of the injured Canadians. These great and good men have not 
forgotten their own and their friends' sufferings forty years ago, in the like cause 
against the same oppressor. Had the race who witnessed the revolution of 1776 not 
passed away, the patriots of the north would not now be looked on by the authori- 
ties of Washington and New- York with a distrust and suspicion which outvies the 
hati-ed of their British tyrants : 



TO THE HUMANE, 

An effort has been made in Canada to introduce into that country an altered form 
of governm.?nt ; the people resolved to shake off their colonial character, and have 
aspired to the rank of a nation. As not unfrequent in such cases, the early efforts 
have been disastrous. Inexperienced, imperfectly organized, imperfectly armed, and 
cut off from reinforcements, victory to the patriots was nearly impossible. The 
chivalrous band which dared to oppose itself to a disciplined enemy of more than three 
times its number, possessing still greater advantage in the materiel of war, must, 
whether we approve or disapprove its motive, command the admiration due to intre- 
pid valor. If history prove faithful, justice will be done by posterity to the memory 
of these avaunt asserters of liberty, the forlorn-hope of a people resolved to be free. 
An investigation of the prudence or imprudence of the outbreak in Canada, belongs 
solely to the Canadians themselves. The consideration whether, if successful, it 
would produce good or evil, is exclusively their province. There is but one point, 
in which it can be legitimately viewed by those not immediately involved in the con- 
sequences : the people of Canada had a right to assume self-government, whenever 
they deemed themselves capable to exercise and maintain it. With their calculations 
or miscalculations, others have no proper concern. A denial of this principle would 
be a virtual arraignment of the motives of Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Jeffer- 
son, Lafayette, Montgomery, Jackson, and other sages, soldiers, and statesmen of 
the American revolution ; it would be a strevraaent of the graves of the dead with 
contumely and reproach, a direction of the finger of contempt and scorn toward the 
few survivors of the immortal band who yet linger in a land they saved by their 
labor, and moistened by their blood. 

The patriots have been defeated. Fire, sword, and pillage, have marked the track 
of an unsparing conqueror ; the families of the captured, the wounded, and the slain, 
many of the wounded themselves, and others whose habitations lay in the path of 
the vanquished, and were plundered and destroyed, have sought refuge within the 
United States. In a northern climate, in the commencement of winter, they are 
without house or home, except such as sympathizing hospitality tenders; without 
food or clothing, except the little of the latter which they snatched away from the 
grasp of the robber. Neutrality may be an incumbent duty, but it has its limits ; it 
interferes not with the good offices of humanity, it blunts not the heart, it forbids not 
the extension of our charities. To reUeve the poor and the distressed is a holy work, 
which no human power has a right to control. As one of a committee appointed to 
seek relief for the suffering Canadians, I will gladly recqjf e, personally, or through 
the post-office, any contributions that may be offered through me, and will place it 



QQ APPENDIX. 

in the proper channel of transmisssion. I am unable to undergo the exertion of 
much walking, owing to my advanced age, and must offer tliis as my apology for 
not waiting on all those from whom I would expect the much needed aid. This 
cause compels me to resort to tire present mode of application. 

THOMAS O'CONNOR, No. 1, St Marks Place 
New-York, December 7tb, 1838. 






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